Page 367 - Church of God Publications

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you use different terminology
from that to which it has become
accustomed"
(ibid.
p. 292).
While we see these exceptional
traits occasionally in the lower
creatures, yet there is a differ–
ence. "The animal has no such
reserve of unused powers and
unlimited capacity of develop–
ment, in a thousand ways, as are
seen in man"
(The Mississippi
Val/ey and Prehistoric Events,
by C.B. Walker, p.
71).
Man's Predlcament
Man dreams, he innovates, he
creates a variety of images in bis
mind, and then he has the option
to choose whether to act on any
one or more of them. The rest of
the physical world, whether living
or mineral, simply acts according
to
law.
"In the natural order
there is no effect without a cause;
no motion without a purpose.
Only the spirit of man lives out–
sirle this encompassing law. And
because it does, man is the only
one of the earth's creatures with
the power to shape bis own envi–
ronment"
(Official Souvenir
Program
of the 1962 Seattle
World's Fair). And shape it he
does, for good and for evil.
Here then is the answer to
man's predicament. Only man has
that freedom of choice, only man
has that capacity for imagination
for good or evil, and only man
needs that instruction in "law" to
help him make choices that are in
both bis and bis neighbor's best
interests. Thus man is truly a
unique creature. What is the ori–
gin of this innovative, creative
bent?
It
is inseparably linked
with man's origin'.
Describe man. "In the general
features of bis bodily structure
[man] is closely related to the
higher animals" ( the mammals
and more narrowly the primates),
"while in bis mental and spiritual
powers there is a worldwide dif–
ference ... he has ... faculties
with a compass and power abso–
lutely unparalleled in creation as
we know it. ... Physically ... the
most perfect, the most beautiful
and noble ... he seems to be the
significance, the end and purpose
of the system of nature as a
September 1980
wbole ... king in the earth ... all
nature is a book made for bis
reading and instruction ... bis
range of moral powers; of distin–
guishing between right and
wrong; of admiring purity and
moral beauty and of practicing
virtue ... of living in the past and
the future by a well-trained imag–
ination, render him immeasurea–
bly superior"
(The Mississippi
Va/ley,
p. 60).
Again we have met that word
imagination.
It is the ability or
tendency to form mental images.
Darwin too had a dream, an idea,
a view of things. Darwin's evolu–
tionary tree, hypothetical struc–
ture that it was, was supposed to
become reality once the fossil
evidence from the far corners of
the unexplored earth carne in. As
decades passed agnostic evolu–
tionary scientists imagined that
proof was close at hand, that man
was a chance happening on earth,
the "inevitable culmination of an
improbable chemical reaction," a
blood relative of the apes, a
descendant of green scum. "God
is dead!" became a slogan of the
more outspoken radical theolo-
. gians in the mid-20th century.
The situation is not at all that
conclusive in the mind of any
informed evolutionist, theistic or
atheistic, today.
The arrangement of supposed
blood relatives on this hypotheti–
cal evolutionary tree is in a con–
tinua! state of flux with each new
arrangement no more satisfactory
than the last.
How can evolutionists do this
to us? We thought their imagina–
tions were directed to the busi–
ness of disseminating truth. How–
ever much sorne defend the doc–
trine of the evolutionary origin of
man and al! life forms, the foun–
dational evidence is seen to be but
shifting sand.
To Err ls Human
...
A quote from
Lije,
January 22,
1971,
expresses a measure of
exasperation at the antics of the
overly trusted minds of these ser–
vants of society. The discussion of
the problem of
DDT
and Rache!
Carson's controversia} book
Si–
lent Spring
brought forth the
following comment: "One expects
the scientists to provide the truth,
scientists being dispassionate men
who can eliminate prejudice and
emotion.... But one learns that
at the sticking point, science
breaks down, and the scientists
are sometimes wrong, frequently
biased and usually incapable of
agreeing among themselves....
They are expert in the techniques
of persuasion and are just as capa–
ble as the rest of us loading
arguments, waving red herrings
and ignoring conflicting data"
(p.
48B).
The pronouncements of scien–
tists in these speculative fields
should really be taken a little less
seriously. When looked at in an
unbiased fashion, man does not at
all appear to be the product of an
imaginary evolutionary process
but rather as a basic plan,, a
unique "unspecialized" creation
with unlimited imagination. All
other physical creatures stand out
as being highly specialized.
The plain truth about why
man is as he is proves to be far
simpler than the intricate fiction
and the shifting arguments pro–
duced in the creative minds of
evolutionary geologists and bi–
ologists of these past 200 years.
Man's ancestry, unlike Darwin's
dream, is properly traced bac;k
by Luke to Noah, then back
another eight steps to Seth,
"which was the son of Adam,
which was the
son
of God"
(Luke 3:23-38). Adam was
God's son
by creation,
and the
word
God
in
G~nesis
1 in the
Hebrew is
Elohim,
a uniplural
word indicating more than one
individual in the God realm.
God
created this "first Adam"
and bis wife Eve and said, "Let us
make man in
our
image, after
our
likeness: and let them have do–
minion [over the other crea–
tures] ..." (Genesis 1:26). God
then was the One who put this
creative imaginative nature in
man and woman, a talent that was
to be used in the mastery of the
earth and ifs creatures.
What is the origin of creativi–
ty?
Elohim,
who created the
heavens and earth and all in them,
put
His own creative talent
into
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