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CHAPTER 6

SEEING THINGS IN THEIR PLACE

IS ESSENTIAL TO GRACE FOR OUR RACE

and immiscible with human inventions,
vain contentions and armed interventions

 

 

From Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium

CHAPTER  13

Expanded for the Present Volume

THE FITS AND STARTS
THAT CAN NEVER REPLACE CREATION,
A THING MOST WONDERFUL

 

SPECIALISATION IS NOT THE FOUNTAIN OF WISDOM


In fact, specialised study does NOT remove the folly of false presuppositions. It is not worthless for that reason; but when you try to make a philosophy out of such studies with such presuppositions, it is PREDICTABLE and EMINENTLY FULFILLED that you WILL and CAN get nowhere. You will engage in such futile follies as assessing it is all meaningless, thereby showing that the category of meaning is well known to you, and that you are very capable in handling it, being (somehow) enabled to declare what does, or perchance does not, have the quality of meaningfulness. Yet if the inherent quality of things WERE meaninglessness, it would be meaningless for you to utter this 'fact', for the capacity to know what was not there, would be beyond you, and if you could exercise the meaningful faculty, meaning could not simultaneously be absent: so that you could not apply it as a critic, assessor or judge! Permutations of nothing do not create anything.

These things were dealt with in detail in SMR Ch.3, and similar things in That Magnificent Rock 5, 7; but they are ever with us. Inventing in vacuo, the categories of thought which DERIVE from THE REALITY, BOTH physical and logical, of being CREATURES of the CREATOR, with coherence: it is rationally impossible. The omission of this background removes the necessities underlying the assumptions with which we in fact work. It is like being on a limb, and MOST conscientiously sawing it off, while trying to show the crowd below, just how unnecessary that limb really is. You can only fall. A balloon of helium made by philosophy does not hold you when a bird pecks it. It is too unsubstantial.

In short, relativity is not some cure-all, explain all, as even Einstein found (Time, op.cit, p.61). It can make a contribution for certain areas, as did Newton; and it is not that Newton is wrong, but that his results are limited practically to certain situations. Are we then to be surprised if Einstein's thoughts which contributed to the atomic age, are found not to cover all, just as Newton's did not, though they enhanced dramatically the mechanical age which preceded the atomic! Will man never learn to be humble! Not with the humility which despises the reason it uses, while using it; for that is philosophically absurd and self-contradictory: for with what will that which is invalid, establish validity!

The concept that there is an ultimate irrational is absurd likewise. There is nothing irrational about this: that POSSIBLY there is an INABILITY to FIND what happens at certain low levels of magnitude, because the MILIEU in which things interact is not available for inspection at that level (as Ford postulated SMR pp. 405-408, 418-420). Firstly, the upholding of all things by the divine power is necessary if it is to be preserved as logically apt, substantially mobile and energically adequate. It is POSSIBLE to conceive of something self-sufficient, but NOT when it is plainly running down (2nd Law of Thermodynamics) and CANNOT be eternal (for the resources being used up, cannot constitute, though limited, a sufficiency for unlimited time, so that even Paul Davies talks of a beginning).
 

It is possible to think of a different universe indeed; but THIS ONE IS NOT LIKE THAT.

This one routinely obeys the laws of causation (and that includes miracles in this, that the cause then of the multiply attested operations, is found in the super nature and not in the nature which He instituted and constituted as our universe, with ourselves together, one total entity of VERY different kinds of entrants!).

With concepts of turbulence through waves of 'quantum foam', and the resultant difficulty of particulate precision of motion at the tiniest levels, like a boat in a turgid sea (though these be but thoughts among thoughts, as normal in this area of physics), there is now simply one more entrant for the role of logical explanation. It concerns however our LIMITS in BEING ABLE to determine what will happen in certain fields, remote from real life.

Dr David Bohm has  as noted in SMR (note above), considered wave-particulate reality for the wave-particle matrix, with  statistics (and hence the probability concept) as merely the result of OUR ignorance. The MACRO-results of all this, as  Professor John McIntyre pointed out, are clear enough (SMR pp. 409,412-413). There CAN therefore be no question of deliberating particles! since their deliberations would always be constant and consistent to a programmed end. Nor CAN there be ANY question of the chaotic, for causatively 'correct' consequences cannot come from disorder as a base.

Exasperation and frustration might indeed like to SAY SO! But this is not the fact. What is chaotic is ONLY ONE THING: the presuppositions with which the matter is often approached. From some preferred viewpoint (as with the less than smooth cross-members in the car analogy), there might be something less than would be thought; but from the OPERATIVE DESIGN viewpoint, there is, perhaps, nothing more than is needed. Indeed, in these fields, often what is thought to be nicer, could turn out to be less efficient for the purpose actually in hand. Transfers of elements, components, energy can also have a certain diffuse appearance, whether in water-falls or pulsing of electricity; but this is not poor design, but visible effects of underlying causes efficiently producing their routine effects in the transmissive medium.

It is time the rancid reactions to procedural felicity were replaced by a more objective realisation: namely, that this is something that does marvels and is programmed down to minutiae to the point we do not, because we cannot, find their underlying aspects, remote from view, but not from need. Matter proceeds with purposeful indifference to the philosophers of cant, the proponents of dissatisfaction, like a Rolls Royce of whose tyres, some child says this: LOOK! It has little dents all through the surface of its tyres. It is tiresome, this endless cacaphony of imprecise complaints set in ignorance, contrary to the performance criteria, a sort of carping critical lack of consideration, combined with signally slanted ‘interpretations’ which lack ANY ground but incapacity, and ignore every ground of operational felicity.

As to UPHOLDING, since nothing CAN be WHOLLY self-sufficient, which a) is created and b) is running down (and the physical aspect is doing this), there MUST be such an operation; and of course it is Biblically attested (Hebrews 1:1-3). It explains any problem with the cohesion of matter, and the failure of things to transmute in the arena of their interplay, into something radically different. Such things are coherent. They account for each other. They are logically harmonious, scientifically competent, not writhing with contradictions, or asserting the opposite of the evidence. In this, they are of course in the domain of science properly so-called, such as Lord Kelvin was keen to promote (cf. Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming...Ch.4, pp. 63, 73ff.), such as Max Planck insisted on, in all its rationality (SMR pp. 398-400) and such as Einstein was keen to pursue (Time op.cit, pp. 61ff.). Einstein's problem has been considered in SMR (pp. 299ff.).
 
 

THOUGHT THAT IS RATIONALLY WROUGHT;
OR THOUGHT FRAUGHT WITH PERIL ?

Here was a man of true genius, who could see the necessities of thought, in order to be able with validity to embark on it; could not see how they could be gained, but admitted he worked on such a basis. The answer to this problem, as to all the other flecks of thought on the foam of inadequacy (though Einstein's concepts were far nearer theism than those of many) is easy to find, as so often, when adequate understanding PRECEDES the thought. It is to Einstein's great credit that he SAW the need for such an understanding, a basis for validity of thought, but did not at that time see how to get it.

Nevertheless: Better to know you are a beggar, and beg, than think yourself opulent, and boast! Infinitely better, one might almost hazard! He insisted on finding with that same rationality which had enabled so VERY MUCH, already in his theories, even practical things that in some respects have been eminently helpful, and discovering in this way, what remained.

His problem was not (operationally, but it seems it still was spiritually) the wrong presuppositions in this respect: relative to God. It was rather with respect to the universe. WHY should a universe created by God (but here with his philosophy, there was a fudge factor which spoiled the otherwise promising hopefulness of his approach) BE integrable in terms of SOME ONE FEATURE, FACTOR or INGREDIENT! Does it HAVE to be!

The ancient Greek thinkers are so naive that they could almost without help inhabit many an academic philosophy department of today! EVERYTHING HAD TO BE originated by, or coming from, or the product of...

a) water or perhaps
b) air, or perhaps
c) change or perhaps
d) stability, static to the end, and unyielding
e) atoms (although the spaces between them would still be a problem, their origin and their capacities: but never mind, consistency of thought is the LAST THING in these musings!).

So the turgid mess called early Greek Philosophy went on its Athenian way (with apologies to those not of Athens, yet as it were, being Athenian before their time!).

It was, as comedy, entrancing; as unsophisticated verve, delightful; but of course, in practice, absurd.

David Hume's Humorous Humian Nature was another such effort (cf. SMR Ch.3, esp. pp. 257ff.), a naturalism for man by which he could good-naturedly tell the truth to truthless nature! It was quite an epic, the destruction of which is exhibited in the reference given. But the point here is this: there is this thrust of lust, like some burning throat in the desert, to imbibe a unified water, encompassing all things, and the throat as well in its format. The mentor must be it; the will; the lifeless seed of atoms; the particles; the particulate, the invisible, the profound, the cause and the consequence, the limpidity of thought and the crass shrieking of matter, the profound wallowings of befuddled will with the incisive logician's skill! It is what then ? It is the unity of the garbage can, the shredder! But not all is shredded, though it WILL most assuredly be reduced to size !(cf. Ezekiel 28:9), when its implicit pretensions of spirit, exemptions of logic and rescensions of unrealism are as silent as they are now irrational.

Why ON EARTH should everything bother to come from air or fire or atoms or any other element or aspect of the whole diversified and multi-partitioned totality! Why should the errors of thought reside (in man, who is so very good at this particular thing) where the directed atoms know no error; and why should will be found, where things went obviously according to a will which they did not possess, irrelevant to their operations, themselves oblivious of their servitude, not being blessed with so much as the capacity to think! and if they had it, where is the evidence! and since there is none, where is the science that postulates such things to explain what is not explicable, or for explication, since it does not enter into the data of what happens (cf. SMR pp. 80ff., 115ff., 131ff., 284ff., 307ff., 413ff., A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3) ? Just precisely where! Is this to be the end of the world, for science-philosophy (currently by many vitamised with science almost as if it were a fun fair, for serious-minded scientists, weary of the strait-jacket of disciplined thought and taking time off with a few beers!) ?

There IS A UNITY of course. It is not (and as noted, CANNOT BE) a self-sufficient unity. it is NOT the unity of the wholly disparate; for there is no unity in systematic diversity. It MAY of course be UNIFIED into an operational totality (in fact, this has been done and it deserves research - it is called MANKIND). Here the trilogy of will and mind and spirit is wedded, but not welded. It does not systematically interfere, though there can be some interaction. It is like any other invention really: there are provisions for interaction in certain respects, and there is a construction which erects certain sophisticated realms (like the old-fashioned wireless-tubes), which operate according to their own field, but provide as ingredients, what is needed in some allied field.

The human body is full of such discrete and brilliant provision for mass-production, mathematical unity, and energic adequacies at all levels, from cells to organs. The unity is NOT TO BE FOUND*1 however by seeing how an electron is REALLY a brain; or a nerve cell really a muscle; or a mind really a slave system, or a will, merely a delusion. How would you know, since you have one; and how can anyone EVER penetrate to the fact of delusion, if it is endemic! If you could TELL, it COULD not be endemic. If it is NOT endemic, then it is merely a possible condition, and then the nature of it, its causes and cure becomes logically possible. Logic burrows beautifully, and when its end is found, its value is confirmed. It points to God, as we saw in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, with unerring certitude; and when He is found (and the point here is that there is more to it than a discovery per se, since He is a person with His own ways), and in God it finds its source, then in fact His statements are found, and from Him, His word has all things in an order so perfect, that it fills with a just awe, and a due delight.

Thus, THIS UNITY IS NOT from some ingredient. It is in the DESIGN. That is the way with all of our cases, and it is way here. It is in the mind of the designer, the creator, the conceptualisation of the constructor, the mental habitat of the maker, the spirit of the producer, the flair of the fashioner, the thought of the conceiver.

To try to ‘unify’ the penchants, principles, preferences, purposes and productions of what matches the definitive expression of design, with some particle is merely one more expression of the naturalistic fallacy. How does this calumny of logic proceed, and what does it say ? This:


The habiliments, the paraphernalia of its genius are ignored, and the concept that it makes itself is imported, though the means are as absent as the minds that despise the virtue and brilliance of the creation; and the ‘principles’ of such a happening, as ludicrous as any other myth (strictly so-called, since the cause is inelegantly inadequate for the observable result);  while the inexcusability is as vast as in any other case, where profuse examples of what IS the basis, creativity, exist in the VERY MINDS and SPIRITS of those who refuse to believe what logic demands. Here the exact expressions of this sort of thing are in ourselves, constant, if not daily, or with some, virtually hourly events. (Cf. SMR pp. 131, 159, Ch.3; That Magnificent Rock Chs.1, 7,  8; Questions and Answers 3; Ch.1 supra).

There is NOTHING TO IT, when you look at it as an exoteric set of unrelated paraphernalia. Its unity is not then explained, but mocked. This is not scientific theory, but brain-weary dilettantism. The reality which Freud, Darwin and  Marx all missed, like the early Greek thinkers, is in its functional sufficiency for multi-phase operation. It lies in the inter-relation between design and performance - as with a car.

A car has THIS unity: that it goes, performs a transport function, allows passengers to sit, wheels to turn, rigidity sufficient to prevent great discomfort to passengers and too easy injury on unintended impacts with objects foreign to the purpose of the driver. ALL its systems are to this ONE END. THERE is its unity. Its performance is index to its meaning, and its meaning is an attribute of its design, and its creation is the process of thought and intelligently directed energy, by which this purpose is integrated into a design of multiply different TYPES of object, a mere junk heap except for one thing. And that ? ITS PURPOSE. Its design and its purpose mark it out as rational, its purpose marks out the elements of the ensemble as critically able to be appraised.

It goes ? Could we do better, when it comes to life! Have we done better ? Why, we have done nothing at all, studying and considering and coding, and clipping here, shearing there, and acting altogether like Year 8 students in their first year in the lab..

In the case of man, then, we cannot do at all; though some of the blemishes after a few thousands of years on the 'road' of the vehicle called man, can be repaired.

Let us then create spirit ! Let man be very wonderful and congratulate himself fatuously on his imaginary prowess, though he be but made.

Let us articulate the modes of making God-consciousness, personality understanding, ideational originality, planes of thought, originality so intense and profound that errors are not nonsense at times, but the buffetings of the wings in the airs of grandeur, in the thoughts of many things, planes and dimensions, depths and majesties. Will man so speak ? will the denial of logic be assisted now by the addition of megalomania ? Forgetting his created status, will he now try to imitate God by constructing himself! He cannot even construct its material substructure (cf. SMR pp. 316Dff.). He is like a technician, imaging he is a great tenor when he first begins to understand the deposition of sound code onto magnetic tape, forgetting that originality and its material modes of conveyance from one point to another, are as far apart as heaven and earth;  as are man in the image of God, with divine access, and man in the dumped desecration of presumption.

How one is reminded of the word of God, here, where Isaiah prophesied from the Lord, concerning those other idolatries men worshipped, those other works of their hands (for really, it lies in the mind and in the spirit, the things people are illogical enough to worship are mere implements, while we ourselves do better, being implement assessors)

"Indeed they are worthless:
Their works are nothing;
Their moulded images are wind and confusion."

And that is the just status when a swollen spirit and an intemperate mind despises its formulator, forgets its fabricator, attributes wonder to nothing, and nothing to wonder, and uses the rationality it despises, while dismissing it as meaningless, by means of its meaningfulness as a rational assessor. COULD it be possible that more absurdity COULD STRIKE this earth ? It will however; for the fever is merely drawing near to its terminal fantasies (cf. II Thessalonians 2).

But let us return to the concept of imperfections, no small component of which come from the stentorian abuse of liberty which pocks this globe, and the not inconsiderable but highly restrained 'visitations' of the Almighty (such as you see illustrated in detail in Amos 4, and on the vast scale in the case of Moses and Egypt - cf. The Other News, Appendix 2, and Biblical Blessings 7, Beyond the Curse).

When we begin to descend to the minute level of the iron, with some (for the purpose) not very important imperfections (found under the microscope) in the steel in supportive cross-members, we may say, 'Ah! that is not very perfect, that does not have the systematic consistency and fluency which we would like!' , and the manufacturers reply, 'Ah Monsieur! it is not to be a matter of concern at all. THAT! it is nothing. It does not affect the performance of the design for the purpose intended. If you were to want a higher degree of coverage of such things, it would cost more, and go no better!' or something of this type.

There have been so many attempts to intimate dissatisfaction with the grand and eloquent modes of design-oriented, code implemented, purpose built gear, which operates in unity of function and coherence of language, that it has its amusing side. We shall for ease of thought, however, lest someone should lose the way, put these illustrations in the End-note Excursion *1.

SO OUR WORLD is a DESIGN, and its underlying interstices are 1) purpose built and 2) subject to an upholding power which will never be FOUND among the visible objects, since the power concerned, as demonstrated (SMR Ch.1) is invisible; and its results? they are not at all invisible. We are one of them!

If we want to trace out the effects of light and so on, then in our order, it is possible. If we want to find the UNDERLYING SUB-STRUCTURE of things, just as an exercise of thought, we will find them suited to the STATED BIBLICAL PURPOSE of the program, enabling just that regularity and order which we both need and find, but not at all necessarily enabling its investigation at levels of mere academic interest, in this way. There is nothing chaotic in limits to investigability; or inability to ascertain the ultimate sub-atomic particles or sub-atomic matrix unit. It is not necessarily the case that such exist. Pieces may be SMASHED (as may vases), but there is no great significance in that. Anyone can smash.
 


DO NOT TRASH THE TREASURE:
ONE CASE WHERE YOU SHOULD NOT FORGET YOURSELF

You may find the trash can, or make new objects by destroying part of the construction, and then analysing them, taking them out of your own new trash can; or you may be able to find some of the limiting fixtures in the universe which prevent it running away from its grooves, but all this is relatively unimportant. Unless of course you wish to specialise, like naughty children in the drawing room of a wealthy Aunt, in finding ways to break up her home. THEN of course, all this is of the utmost importance.

However, the study of the materials will not bring much fruit in understanding the mind of the architect. The relationship of materials in their USABLE FORM to purpose, and of practical living to shape, configuration and highly variable sub-designs, together with the vision of the integration of all these, in terms of ultimate usage and aesthetics etc. - all this would be of the utmost value, if your aunt steadfastly refused to reveal that the place was built, and built by an architect.

Soon you might be able to show her that really, YOU KNEW, for you could discern the material-function relationship of materials adapted and carefully applied  to intended use, and of shapes made, to utility intended and so on... Then she might congratulate you as a clever child, and then share with you her concern for your mind, since normal children might have been expected to understand all these things without so much effort!

In fact, to revert to the actual realm of interest, in physics: it is NOT the case that quite simply, matter becomes energy. That is merely one variable, one possible kinetic component, one substance interchange WITHIN A TOTAL SYSTEM WITH FAR MORE IN IT. Abstraction is often useful; but it should NEVER be confused with reality. It enables one to isolate the issues in hand, and to investigate just how the one thing relates to the other(s); but when one FORGETS that there is really a far greater richness to reality than the things voluntarily isolated for THOUGHT RESEARCH, then the whole project is in danger of becoming merely chimerical, a display of forgetfulness which makes the exercise doomed to ultimate futility, or worse, confusion.

ENERGY in PACKETS may indeed move out of those packets, or into other packages. There is FURNITURE in the universe, as well as energy. There is an arrangement of furniture; there is a provision and procedure for variation among the components. It is not OPEN. It is closed. The rules may be expanded to cover cases, which in turn may be irrationally extrapolated and so lead to ludicrous results (like an infinitely massive object at the speed of light) - when, just like variability WITHIN KIND, they become something quite different.

There are variabilities which certain rules permit; but how long is it to be before science of the 20th century, in the 21st grows up. THAT, it must be re-phrased: Before much of what is deemed science, becomes alert to its place, limitations and purpose! You cannot just assume you know everything and take every Tom, Dick and Harry Theory (even if it is Sir Dick in some cases) and expect them happily to conform to your supposed omniscience, and to be putty in your hands, as you displace all that went before, and explain all that is. NO ONE ELSE does it in science!

In fact, people sometimes are interested in natural things, and become scientists, and work out some of the ways in which they interact, and make laws and institute rules, and then vary them when they realise how much they left out, and how little they know, and how many more rules there are, and how limited are the applications of the little rules they found; and of course, there are SOME few higher rules which relate equally to logic and to observation (an excellent testimony to the uni-logic creation of the internal thought facility called mind, and the external operation facility, called matter) .


It resists. It does not have a mind of its own, but it is the product of someone who has, and He has ... laid down the law.
 


To the extent that these things show you HOW some things interact, it can be useful. As soon as it becomes a new religion, however, in which the fact that some things react to each other in certain assignable ways becomes a thing to worship, or man who has found out these properties in some things, becomes a thing to worship, or science does, or the governments that enable it do: then of course it is merely childish and it is only restraint which prevents one from saying infantile. It ever changes, never fully accounts, and in latter years, is rife with internal self-contradiction for the reasons shown, to be shown, and predicted.
 
 

YOU HAD BETTER BE IN TIME, FOR TIME IS IN YOU

Time! gentlemen, time. What is that ? How profound! says one; explain that, and all is revealed. HOW! Because in fact time is a process, and the process COULD NOT BE except it were intelligently created, and the measure of the operations of the results of the creation by intelligence is certainly interesting. It is however not the case that time is some universal, DISPOSABLE component of matter. Matter may exhibit it, or relate to it, this way or that. It is like a clock. THAT, it is not time. It is a process-related, time measurer.

In the space-time continuum (a part of reality, like a stage for a concert, but don't insult the choir please, it is not staged as BEING A STAGE, but as A DISTINCTIVE GROUP PUTTING SOMETHING ON, WHILE on stage!), various inter-relationships, of which some are known,  may be conceived and expressed in analytical terms.  You get such quixotic and ludicrous concepts at times, such as this, that time goes backwards. WHAT IS time! they ask profoundly. (See on what it is: SMR pp. 422Kff., S 33, 422M-P, Repent or Perish, Excursion 2, State of Mind).

It is, as the Bible indicates, a process measure for events. The construction, purpose-built, for man, houses components and situations  that are not necessarily useful that chronological purpose, outside the milieu invented. That, it is the nature of invention.

A clock is useful for time, in certain circumstances; but will not operate in all circumstances.

Purpose and correlation of instrument to it, this is uniformly omitted by persons pursuing purposes, while investigating what have all the appurtenances of inventions, whose provider they prefer, in multiplied cases, to acknowledge. They are like students ignoring the professor... and their mothers.

Just as Marxism omits entrepreneurship, so the materialist omits purpose and person. He does this whether as Freudian, Marxist or Darwinian, to take the essentials of the system of each. It is a ludicrous omission, since it is only if a person is (intrinsically as to capacity) valid in thought, that the thought of a person not being valid in thought can arise, as itself potentially valid. If however the person is valid in thought, then the thought that a person cannot be valid in thought is contradicted. If on the other side,  such is not the case, then the thought itself is contradicted. Yet they carry on as if there were no problem. How can, however, thought be valid if it is the impersonal consequence of thoughtless actions! Do actions create validity ? Is activity logic ? Is motion thought ? It is useless to equivocate, saying this, Thought may in our case, involve motion! for that is not the same thing. A car may involve motion, without being it. Is the plane of symbolic signification of ideas an aspect of the non-symbolic procedures of non-ideas?

Is error part of non-error? Is irrelevance, as is the case with error, in terms of the machinations of what is merely there in terms of its construction, to be equated with the highest possible degree of relevance, as occurs when, in the realm of thought, the will is allowed to proceed along the multitude of possible thoughts, to one which does not fit the case, or aborts the undictated but necessary rules of thought! So it creates error.

To put these as one: what is it ? That is not science, but magic; it is not reason but irrationalism. If you are going to make things happen for no reason, and contrary to all reason, and things not even related become the creative construction of what lacks entirely the capacity itself, then you deny validity in logic; and hence your construction is not even possibly true. Why then ? Because if your presupposition deletes your operating validity, then you CANNOT on that basis be right and we MUST NOT listen to you, unless we are addicted to wasting time in what is self-contradictory.

Marxism's omission was foolish; so too is the physics case, when SOME of these scientists who in effect belong to a certain religio-philosophic club within their professional ranks, omit persons.

Time is relevant to PERSONS in a DESIGN ENVIRONMENT in which they lie, and it is a measure with processes available, to allow relationship of events to each other and to the past and future. Process built by explicit divine word (Genesis 1), it proceeds in such a style. Other processes following this lead, can interpret other sorts of internal components, for the time-sequence situation. But there is no guarantee that all process interprets chronology for all purposes. The thing being purpose built, is not susceptible to endless invention of variants. Were man omniscient, even that might not suffice: for power too is required to invent susceptible worlds, programmed, prodded and stylised to allow - as in all equipment - what it is desired and designed to happen.

 

Failing to find, it verifies its folly. Mars mocks! Matter smiles. Wrong assumptions make wrong conclusions, and wrong conclusions have trouble in concluding at all, for it goes on, like a runaway car … until the end.

What IS found is what was predicted, just to complete the derisive warning of the word of God (II Peter 3:3ff.); and the religious capitulation of many adds to that predicted program so clearly depicted for assessment and pronounced for a purpose, so long ago (II Timothy 3:1,4-5). As so often noted, the TIMING of the phenomenon at its height, is set in a pattern of events, including the unique (cf. SMR Chs.8-9), and this also is a warning, a witness and a work of art in scientifically assessable predictions, in that it has been extant for a couple of millenia, and happens in its chronological site, as stated.

The frustration of the pedants is just as described in I Corinthians 1 and Psalm 94:11 ("the Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are futile" - in just this context of ignoring the obvious), precisely conforming with their endemic confusions, their naturalism bankrupt, and their oddities and enigmas in keen baying array, as they seek to explain all in some limited terms, and to dismiss the creation, jamming into the field - extrapolations of a system that does not extrapolate, but has been GIVEN the character that it has, like a house!

This error: It is profound! and its results are predictable; and that is one more prediction which is fulfilled, and WILL BE fulfilled. You cannot do what is impossible, or adequately explain what is created in terms which ignore that fact. Reason must give way first; and philosophy is largely the itemised account of how that happens! Never was it a better exemplar than now! but that, it too is predicted in essence (II Timothy 4:1-4, II Timothy 3:1ff., II Peter 3:1-12), for the present  period - shall be say scientifically ? - assigned for review (our own, - cf. SMR Ch.8, pp. 660-680,  and on the 'fables' prediction dealt with in 660ff., see 252H-I, 378ff., 208ff., 422Eff.).

In other words, in the precise texture of prophetic events which make a pattern, including unique elements, there is facility in exposing the very qualities which relate to OUR PRESENT INVESTIGATION, that of fable, for example, growing like a fungus infection. Of course it is not CALLED 'fable', for how could you know it, if you were its subject!

This is a specific syndrome for our age, and these matters above considered are a specific field for the exaggerated exhibition of this syndrome. It is like the fevers and rigors which afflicted the soldiers returning to the US from Iraq. Given the chemicals used against them, such things might be expected. Given the field of the world, and the confusing devilries which abort so many, and the state of the case (Rev. 12:12), then not only is the predicted case fulfilled, according to the word of God, the Bible; but the predicted reason for the eventuations - including the mounting woes of this century just past -  is most apparent likewise.

This! it is science indeed, genuine, authentic, testable, confirmed, verified reality: a matter which is accurate, unchanging because so correct, providing causes and effects, and their inter-relationships in detail. The declarations of this endlessly confirmed and logically required divine donation, the written word of the Bible, show the puny tyrannies of man, in thought, in politics, in aspirations, in slavery to racist arrogance (the ultimate one, HUMAN racist arrogance!), in a context of great depth and holiness on the part of the Lord God. It is thus, there seen and there understood, something

There is nothing else like that. The word of God is not merely resistant to adjustment, but requiring none, as is the way with truth, and remains unmoved. That too is verification: for what would you expect, when your Creator speaks ? Competition ? rational competition ? No, and that is just what you get. Nothing else. And that is what He said you would get (Isaiah 48); and that ? It is yet more verification.
 
 

FORBEARING WHEN IT COMES TO CLAIMING OMNISCIENCE ?
SO FAR!
BUT IT IS BETTER TO LISTEN WHEN THE ONE WHO HAS IT, SPEAKS

But let us revert to the nature of nature, and the assumptions of omniscience so often reviewed, that one wonders HOW anyone could POSSIBLY act as if 'this is it' in science, when ten years but bring a smile in this VERY AREA, when one looks back on the assurance THEN operative.

No, it is no wise to extrapolate from a trend in a situation, to an overall certainty in an imaginary self-sufficient scheme. Nature is not built on these wide-ranging inter-relationships. There are some broad ones; but they are not integumental so much as operational. Indeed, as seen in Chs.1 and 8, of That Magnificent Rock, the three main overall scientific laws are SPECIFICALLY A REFLECTION WITH PRECISION OF BIBLICAL TEACHING (cf. Ch.8, pp. 226ff. ).

Verified and logical principles, nature does show in conformity to its creation, as we see in the above reference; but mere extrapolations are not the way it CAME. When it  was constructed, as in all such cases, the intent of the architect relates to the materials chosen and their mutual inter-actions. It is and can not be otherwise: you do not get the materials choosing the architect, and making themselves in some burnt-out factory into just what he wants, so that he can built, and then they! The materials have THEIR OWN GENESIS, and though some of course are derived from others, there is no question of the materials building their own schema, their own factory or their own architect. All action based on such nonsense, verifies itself by ending in just the absurdities which are so often today confused with abstruse thought.

YOU CAN IMAGINE what would happen to your house if a star struck it, but this is not within the terms of its construction design, and no doubt would be confessed to surpass your knowledge of the materials, if it happened, if you were humble enough to admit it. You may also imagine the construction of your house, not by the mindless interaction of stars, but by what you know is necessary for such a result.

So with the universe itself : it has all the ingredients of construction from law and form, to inter-relationship and symbolical configurations in code for its work. Omit these trivial considerations and you are merely at sea, without flippers.

Man  does NOT have a comprehensive knowledge of his house, not least because his approach is anti-theistic secularism in its zeitgeist conformism, guaranteed to produce muddle-headed muddiness of thought. In general,  man is too high-minded, and this is the case with secular man; yet he CANNOT, as god, know all things. Man may however know something of their inter-relationships within the material parameters given him. When honestly and carefully he faces his limits, then slowly he increases the scope of coherent knowledge.

The Bible has given the design and purpose limits and scenario, and man intemperately now as at Babel (Genesis 11), tries to extrapolate his ignorance and rise up to - or even as, God; but neither intellectually, personally nor environmentally is he capable. We have been at pains to show the rational relationship between true concept (as in SMR Ch.5, which is ultimately simple when it is rightly directed), and observable fields presented to our vision, view and thought; for the Lord is God, the God of truth and wonder.  But for extrapolations of current process to ultimate meaning, by themselves, there is and indeed,  can be no rationality, because they are based on the ultimate irrationality.

Their writhing and squirming are like those of naughty boys in an otherwise orderly classroom.

for its part, it is
perfect in proportion,
exact in inter-relationship,
precise in prediction-fulfilment productions and propositions,
changeless since written, incorrigible over millenia.
 


science versus the Bible at all;

but OF quasi-philosophy in fulsome fantasies,
produced by some scientific sectors,
phalanxes of cultural conformity,
versus the Bible;

with the latter infallible under every assault,
and the cultural conformists endlessly disapproved by the collision of their concepts
when they broach the ultimate levels on their secular humanistic base: and this,

a) with each other
b) with the fact.

There is simply no contest.
It is refreshing.

What is found and abundantly attested ?

It is this.

Age-old wisdom surveying (with appropriate predictions for spice),
the stricken vainglory of the current dissident contemplations:
for as to this enduring and divine facility,
it represents the delightful facts,
battle-wise, unbeaten;
for after all, the Lord of Hosts is God,
the Lord is God as Elijah showed,
and there simply isn't any other.

The position really does not change, has not changed, and will not do so, because it cannot.

I Corinthians 1 is delightfully refreshing after the physical and ideological mayhems of the moment,
as a mirror to the vainglory of the last century,
showing the source of peace for eternity,
with truth that does not lie.

That truth is revealed truth, for God the Lord has spoken.
It gives the way to conceive of all truth, and as truth, it is abundantly ready to be so viewed (Repent or Perish Ch.7, SMR Ch.5, and passim).

That! it is an extra. This divine, revealed truth, it is not only ineradicable, but it is also awesomely faced with the personal touch of entire understanding.
 
 

AND THIS IS WHAT HE SAYS:

You see it in simple overview in I Corinthians 1:18-25:
 


And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.'
 

 


"For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;


but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness,
 

But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men,
and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

MAN, whether in philosophy, physics, psychology, psychiatry or any other variant of his research, when he seeks to know it all, doesn't. He has hope only when the knowledge he seeks is found where alone knowledge can be, other than the temporary inserts of reaction-response phenomena. That ?

It is in God personally. Much of the race has long sought the heart of his life  to function, through bypass operation not of the flesh, but of the spirit: that by which, heartless, he disowns his maker. It is always very painful, and its results suggest way-out surgeons. None succeed. The correct answer comes from an internal change, by which the heart is better placed, and the foundations of life are perceived. Then the little things like the inter-relationships of the different modalities of creation, forms and functions, features and characters, without profusion of illicit, illogical confusion, become clear in their created profiles.

Even mothers do not turn INTO babies; they have them. And mothers ? they came from other mothers, and they, they came from the mothered mother, created that way. You do not really create these things; and the reason it is not now done is simple: man even with the foundations before him, cannot even copy it. How would he? Clever as God has made Him, he lacks something ...
Accordingly we read this synopsis from Romans 1:21-23:

MOVING UPWARDS AND ONWARDS

But what of the creativity which imagines, and the folly which distorts it, and the predestination which attests that it would come, as it came, and flourish in folly, multiply like a plague in potency in the declining earth as it rushes, as it has rushed, but now more aptly, to judgment day!

Here is that marvel and wonder of CREATIVE POWER in God that not only can He create that liberty in man which enables thought to embrace facts, discursively find portents and principles, industriously apply, carefully enquire, select the verified and extend the texture of known truth, but He does not limit it like that. To be sure man cannot become what he is not, his Creator from eternity - that is rather late - but he CAN imagine that he is, or mystically and irresponsibly downing tools, soar in intoxicated grandeurs as if the liberty of thought was freedom to embrace not means for truth, but tickets booked on flights to folly.

THAT, it is truly creative, to MAKE something with this facility. WHY however is it to made ? It is that the liberty being SPIRITUAL, and hence mental, can be liberty indeed, and not censored and nominal, so that the being, man, may fly in the face of all headwinds till he dies, or fly with the wind of truth to sight the remedy and tasting, receive, receiving be redeemed, being redeemed be re-created and in this, find adoption into the splendour of the kingdom of heaven and the wonder of eternal life.

Such creativity is the propounding not merely in principle but in practice, equals world history, in man. Far is this from a distancing from principle or from control. Just as God has made man's creativity, so He has not at all restricted His own. God gives, but does not desecrate; that is the peculiar function of man, but not endemically, as locusts eat wheat as a ... gift, but selectively according as he is displaced from his Maker, and refusing to return, finds all the folds of folly in the amplitude of concatenative history.

God would not be God if He forsook, for the sake of liberty or anything else, such control as enables Him to achieve the purpose of such freedom, and to insist on the repudiation of what is contrary, since all power, all satisfaction and all things desired are His, nor does He for creation, make it otherwise, as if denying Himself in order to be Himself, which is mere and sheer contradiction (cf. II Timothy 2:13). There, the term 'cannot' does not mean that God is subject to externally imposed incapacities, but to internally constrained dismissals, as if He were in the grip of potencies self-destructive, which would imply dissatisfaction and hence a status as a creature, not supernal but subordinate.

That control is seen in the phenomenon of predestination. Naturally in His omniscience, He is not interested in being outwitted by circumstances of His own invention, or in finding the end other that intended, and in so doing, He is not without the foreknowledge which envisages and indeed knows all that will be, or thus with that predictive power and capacity which, as demands omniscience, is able to minute levels, as in the death date of Jesus Christ (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), and countless minute details as seen in SMR Ch. 9 and Joyful Jottings 22-25, to predict over the millenia, yes, and this to the present (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

Thus God invents creativity and does not curb the principle, but does control the outcome until the end of all things, having shown the purpose and principles of all things, attests as in the laboratory of history the reality of truth, and its impossibility to suffer effectual impingement, distortion or devious outwittings.

He knows who are His, and this is but one aspect of predestination. Knowing all things, he predestines accordingly, not so as to destroy what He has created, freedom, but to interpret it and confine its ragings, rampagings or glories, to a systematic expression which in the end, is not smashed by mere powers, but subordinate to oversight, becomes a testimony to truth. Romans 8:29ff. shows just this, and of course, indicates that WHOM HE FOREKNEW, THESE HE PREDESTINED, not vice versa. Naturally, indeed supernaturally, as in Romans 9:16, John 1:12ff., it is not a case of fallen wills taking spills and psychological oddities getting 'in' by some series of circumstances. God does better than this, and because He KNOWS His own, He secures them, and predestinatively, all these things are sure, which otherwise would sink His schema into a situation where oddities might prevail over realities because of the fatal combination of sin and spiritual squalor and disorders resulting in systems within the purvey and indeed internalities of man.

Thus over all the laws of nature, and the laws for man, the former invested, the latter attested verbally, though in some things apparent on inspection (except of course for that pathological presumption which ignores the principles of thought in order to achieve the muddle so often justly called philosophy), there is the liberty of God. In all the ways of man, there is the derivative, restricted, but highly potent liberty of spirit. In this, there is the pathological, compressing and humiliating loss of liberty through distortion and misuse, as would occur in some beautiful automobile, where the 'owner' ignores the handbook, refuses the servicing agent and in ignorance profound, ostensibly knowing all things, gains vested interest in pretentious pretence.

These liberties, the former absolute, the latter derivative, contained but not contradicted, spoilt moreover but not annulled, they are beyond law, but for man, it is not a question of their being above it. Law indicative of reality created by God in strict accord with His own being, though with liberty allowing for vicious and voluntary outages, continue in vast supercession over 'nature' in its driven course.

Just one of the oddities of man, when pathology spoils his liberty, is to seek with that dreadful rationalising which is his gift and his downfall, being one more misused gift where reason is abused, is to imagine that he has no liberty. He can caricature God, his fellows, but imagine that he has no liberty! He can make error but imagine that - even when this is wilful - he has no liberty. He can engage in spectacularly asinine endeavours, because of the adoption of impossible philosophy, and then as if with serious mien, declare he has no liberty. He can pretend that his thought has validity, while he models himself into an imaginary universe where there is no absolute truth, and then declare that this is so, when on this construction, it would not even be possible for him to know. His view is destroyed by the very philosophic disease which led to it (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7).

Thus does liberty, often subdued in reality by the sin which breaches the conditions of its use, like to deny itself; but as if the mood of liberty were never done, at other times, like some impudent child, it can decide that this is too ridiculous, and so deploy itself into the opposite extreme (since after all, there is a measure, a small measure of truth in both extremes in this case), and try to make of himself a god who in some principle which seems shamefaced when you seek from man its credentials, is utterly free.

Utterly free ? wholly autonomous, who cannot command the talents for his birth, nor yet the criteria or time for his departure, assuming it is not by his own hand!

There is however in all this, just that element of truth which disease often exhibits, even though it distorts it, like vision when severe influenza is attacking the body, even in its turmoils.

There IS INDEED an absolute liberty, but it is not for man; yet it is not denied him in this, that if as a creation of God in His own image, He seeks reconciliation with God, then his new Father (of spirit) having this absolute liberty, and love being the medium, adoption the status, as a child of God, then as a child with his Father, yes, he has a view as of profound and grand mountain ranges of such a liberty as that, and not of some system to which he is alien, but as of his Father's power and majesty, who loves him.

There is indeed an absolute subjection, as in the platform for the play called history, It is not subjectible to liberty, since its purpose is other. Efforts to make the persons on the platform part of it are as absurd as those to make them irrelevant to it. They sit on it.

Pathology of the spirit loves to vitamise all things, to know nothing, and to declare a profound understanding. It is a byproduct of rebellion.

It is not for nothing that God makes such declarations as these:

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "The just shall live by faith."

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

"Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."

That is from Romans 1:16-25. Man's desire, on divorce from his Creator, to change the terms of reference make to such oddities of irrationalism, as making man for example an animal, although an animal HAS to be one, where man can act and model himself as an angel, or a devil, or in some degree, as an animal, being CREATIVE in his parts and even in self-modelling, being gifted with LIBERTY of thought and imagination to the uttermost created degree. It is derivative but in much, unimpeded! It leads to ignoring which invents an ignorance so profound, that the very acme of wisdom before rebellious man becomes the draw-cared of his diverted conscience and the object of his worship!

Alienation is the basis of philosophy's long and egregious history of charge and counter-charge, whilst truth slips quietly away from their 'some new thing-itis', to apply the condition of Athens as in Acts 17.

We see this state of affairs also in Ephesians 4:17ff.:

"This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk
as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them,
because of the blindness of their heart;
who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness,
to work all uncleanness with greediness.

"But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness."

This 'darkening of the understanding' is part of life 'alienated from the life of God', and in this there is that 'ignorance which is in them', and this, because of a 'blindness of their heart'.

This of course reduces the capacity for seeing the realities, and so the future which God has been careful to tell us in detail that is vast and precise. Thus illusion sends forth its rockets far away, as if God were, in the Russian vexation, to be found scuttling about, or if not, something instead.

Man is keen on the follies of fantasy, and ignoring the start, blind to the finish, he seeks to invent a new scenario which, being invalid and impossible from the start, recessive if you will, leaves him in the lurch, footing the bill for the thrill while millions starve.

That is called 'the enlightenment' and you may want to give it capitals; but this author does not.

With this predestining and foreknowing prowess, God gives great power to those who know Him, to call to their race to return to reality and embrace not some system, but the cure and remedy which God, having made liberty, and not denying Himself, has of course sent, the Messiah, the Redeemer (Isaiah 48:16, 49-55). The obliterative efforts of man not having succeeded when he seemed gloriously (or vaingloriously in his utter rebellion) to have power in his hand, in the evil-intended plan of the Cross of Christ, and the plan of God in the same, because of His foreknowing and predestinative power having been implemented successfully, not by His servants, but BY HIS ENEMIES, there was in one sense a massive laugh. You see that in Psalm 2. God WILL LAUGH at them.

THEY sought to humble Him for ever, with or without delusion. He used their efforts to fulfil His loving remedy, just as a father, seeing the folly of children, migth turn their ways to good ends. Such is His wisdom, then, that enemies became His servants, and those hostile wrought a holy work, guilty in their motivation, effectual in its result. It was therefore not servants of God but rebels against Him who prepared the sacrifice which, in the love of God, was to be made for man.

This of course He specified in advance, both what they would do, how they would do it, and how He would laugh in view of the resurrection which followed (cf. Psalm 2, Isaiah 49-55). He also specified the Gospel which would result as seen in this same passage, citing it for example in I Peter from that source.

What then is duty for man ? SInce he is not barren wood, or stage material, and not God, but a creature of the same, one of some eminence in that he is in the image of God, able to reason, to some extent to foresee, to love, to understand, to commune, to communicate, what is his duty ?

It is not the duty of mere law, as if he were part of some natural system, and responsible as well as are responsive to it. There ARE laws, since he is in an environment of vulnerability because of sin in a derivative climate, a  double derivative: man is a creation (derivation one), and being so, and equipped with liberty, he has derived from himself by misuse of this liberty, a climate of sin, cultural, academic, social, financial and so forth. In this, it is not easy ... but it is a matter of obedience to find what is prescribed for JUST SUCH A CASE by the One who knows, and has always known, and not only foretells what is to come, but how to meet it, and to await it, and so what duty duly now is.

It is firstly the duty to be reconciled to Himself. Then duty has this second echelon. It requires that a man accept the MEANS which  God has invented, in sending His eternal word in format of flesh, to clear the slate for ever in justice, in judgment, in Himself in that outreach. Next, and this needs to be realised when one has become reconciled, there is a duty to desire the word and way of God, since the divorce has led to its compromise and even reviling. Thus there comes the need to love God first, and one's neighbour as oneself, which is highly uninteresting to those whose whole purpose in life is their own elevation. It is morever unattractive to those who want the top for themselves, as God is obviously far beyond this, and them, so that they feel spiritually miffed, and hence remain aliens.

Duty is nothing other than this, the impact on man of the requirements of God, and in this instance, of the initial requirements of reconciliation, reception of redemption and realisation thereby of the reality of God and the course of His ways, and so an awareness of His laws for good, and not to gain acceptance, but as expression of love, to seek to adhere to them.

It may seem lack lustre; but its sparkle as in all duty, more or less direct or derivative, lies in this. It is God who is love, and discerning this, and knowing Him, man becomes enlightened with understanding and so, instead of being restricted by laws, is aided by them. Does a man despise an oil change in his car ? No ? Why not ? It is no more than an expression of the fact that he is not God, that transport is available by means, and that one of these is that one must realise that a care is a derivative of God's world and man's creativity, as requiring service to meet the total environment of specifications. If one loves to travel, does one not even enjoy having the means put in place! Thus does duty become joy, but it is deeper even than this.

When you LOVE your God, then duty is a felicity, because it increases the awareness, the closeness of that God who, being adorable, "meets with him who rejoices and remembers Him in His ways" (Isaiah 64:5). To meet with God ? Who, loving Him does not desire such an adventure of delight as that! Nor is there any tint or hint of theological hedonism in this. Does one say to one's beloved: Behold I want to go out with you on Friday night because I get a strange thrill which is nice, when I do ? SHE would perhaps slap your face. Or is it rather that any thrill is mere derivation from love, and love SEEKS ITS OBJECT because it is what it is. Delight of this kind is inter-personal, and of its own level. Subordinate consequences become integumental to love, only when it has fled and is but a memory.