The Real Middle Earth

This designation of our temporary habitat is a frequent one in Old and Middle English literature.  J.R.R. Tolkien removed it from its proper place in Reality to his fictional fantasy-land of the Hobbits.  He did no favor to us by that displacement.  We need to get re-situated in Real Middle Earth.  Here is a very good description of it by the 14^th century English poet William Langland, in his Dream-Vision of Piers Plowman. 

 

“And I dreamt a marvelous dream – I was in a Wilderness, I could not tell where, and looking Eastward I saw a tower high up against the Sun, and spendidly built on top of a hill – and far beneath it was a great gulf, with a Dungeon in it, surrounded by deep, dark pits, dreadful to see.  But between the Tower and the Gulf I saw a smooth plain, thronged with all kinds of people, high and low together, moving busily about their worldly affairs.”

 

After a great deal more concerning the vast plain full of all kinds of people, plus a great horde of rats, and with them, more than a thousand little mice, who present a drama telling how to deal with the Cat, who is a tyrant.  “And what this dream means, you folk must guess for yourselves, for I haven’t the courage to tell you…”  That is the Prologue.  Book One begins with “The Teaching of Holy Church” who promises to show us the meaning of the Mountain, the Dark Valley, and the Plain full of people.  This is Middle Earth.   

 

The Tower on the hill is the home of Truth, and He would have you obey His Word.  For He is the Father of Faith, who created you all, giving you a body and five senses with which to worship Him while you dwell below…

 

Then I begged Her in God’s Name to tell me the meaning of the fearful Dungeon in the dark Abyss.  That is the castle of Sorrow.  Whoever enters there may well curse the day he was born.  In it there lives a creature called Wrong, who begat Falsehood, and first founded the Dungeon.  It was he who persuaded Adam and Eve to sin, who tempted Cain to murder his brother, and enticed Judas with the Jews’ silver and then hanged him on an elder tree.  He thwarts love and deceives everyone:  those who trust in his riches are the first to be betrayed….

 

 

There follows a description of Truth that equals anything in mystical Theology, for God is Love.  Then the War in Heaven.  And Heaven could no longer hold them.  And they fell, for nine days together, till God in His Mercy stopped their fall…some remained in the Air, some on earth, (and these are the fairies, elves, gnomes, etc.) and some to the depths of Hell.  And Lucifer, because of his pride, lies the lowest of all.  And all those who do wrong must go after death to dwell with him in the Pit – but the righteous who die still honoring Truth, may be sure their souls will go to Heaven, where Truth Himself, dwelling in the Holy Trinity, will enthrone them. 

 

There are twenty Books or Chapters of this kind of vivid, true to life, brilliantly colored and lively characters with Abstract Names, such as Pride, Lechery, Envy, Anger, Avarice, Gluttony, Sloth, but decked out in the most lively animation, bringing these seven deadly sins, and all other such human faculties as Thought, Intelligence, Study and Learning with the necessary virtues in holy array!  What a wonderful Theater of the Real for our jaded, decadent, perdition-prone Society! 

 

Highly Recommended!  Surely available at a Library near you or from Amazon.com

 

P.S.  Harry Potter opens wide the Door to Hell.  

Darwinian Terms and What They Mask

Common Descent masks the fact that God used the same elements and light (atoms and photons) that He created on Day One, to make the entire Plant Kingdom on Day Three, the Celestial Bodies on Day Four, the Marine and Bird Kingdoms on Day Five, and all land animals, insects, and Mankind (Adam and Eve) on Day Six.  (Day Two saw the separation of the Waters and the finite extension of the boundaries of the Universe.) 

 

This Order of Creation constitutes a hierarchical relationship between the beings created on each of the Six Days.  And, it is this hierarchical relationship that accounts for the similarities found between hierarchically related beings.  Much is made of the close relationship between mankind and the chimpanzee.  The chimp has the very same genes in the very same order as humans.  Chimp DNA has a very similar pseudo gene at the same position on the chain as humans.  These similarities do not stem from common ancestry, but from the close relationship of man to the primates in the static, vertical hierarchy of living forms.  It is obvious, for example, that we humans are more closely related hierarchically to the primates than to the canines, the felines, the equines or bovines, just by the fact that the primates seem to share at least a tendency or some potential for being bipedal than do the quadrupeds.  The external similarity is not only reflected in, but flows directly from, the internal operations of the genome of each created kind (bara-min) – of being; of each genera, family, order, class, phyla and kingdom. 

 

Because these grades or kinds of beings are in a distinctly, hierarchical ordering, as opposed to a democratic or dialectical type of order, it is natural that we humans should have more in common, at least externally, with the higher primates, than with horses, cats or with beetles – worms and butterflies.  For even within each family, order, class, phyla and kingdom, we see grades of perfection approaching to, and receding from, some ideal norm which undoubtedly was the first pair created on that specific Day of Creation Week.  This does not rule out, however, a great variety of sub-types or variations within each kind, for God, as the Supreme Artist-Creator-Maker loves variety as His Creation evidences.  But what Darwin called and thought of as a very long, temporal-horizontal process of evolutionary transformations from one or a very few common ancestors, is, in reality, the real manifest static-vertical hierarchy of being, in which we identify stable, immutable kinds, (substantial forms) preserved as the Order of Creation during the present temporal Order of Generation. God used the same elements to create/make all living forms.  But only He could, and did, give to each kind its specific differences, which are still manifest today despite minor variations within the original kinds. 

 

Random Mutations….This phrase carries a double distortion, a twofold false representation of reality.  First of all, and as a First Principle, it must be established that there is no such thing, per se, in itself, as chance or randomness.  What we speak of as chance or random events are simply events, the causes of which we cannot see or know of because of our finite minds.  But God has no such limitations to His Vision, His Knowledge, or any other of His Attributes.  He is simply and perfectly infinite.  Therefore, He is of necessity omniscient.  He knows all things because He created all things.  Therefore, no event, however transitory, fleeting, or by however small a being, can escape His knowledge, which is also absolutely required concurrently, for every nano or micro-particle event, as well as macro beings and events.  Not only does He know all things, however nano or macro, He controls all things because He is the governor of all by His Providence (see St. Thomas’ 5^th Way). 

 

If this were not so, nothing would or possibly could exist, because God alone gives existence to all things, in the beginning by Creation ex nihilo and in toto, and in subsequent time by His concursus, His Providential Governance sustaining all things in existence and micro-managing all their actions.  This factual situation, because of God’s Providence, there is absolutely no such thing as chance or randomness per se.  This fact places the so-called science of statistics and the theories of Probability, in a very precarious and dubious position.  These are probably the very least reliable of anything currently thought of as science, because of their basis in mere guesswork according to numerical ratios and averages.  It is always Derby Day or the Lottery in the “science” of statistics.  The world is nothing but a huge casino where statistics are normative.  And this is precisely where we are when it comes to natural selection working on random mutations.  Natural Selection is simply Darwin’s fictional mask or replacement for the certain laws of nature implanted in each created kind during the first six days of the world, and transmitted in time by generatum - (reproduction).  These laws of nature originated in the Formal Cause of the Substantial Form of each creature and defined its nature, its essence for all time.  The laws of nature also define the limitations of each creature’s potency or potential capacity for change in concert with its Form.  Form limits potency even as potency limits Form, even though Form or Act always precedes potency in the sense that the Form of any being includes its own potentialities or capacities.  These metaphysical principles and priorities also establish the primary of Form over Function.  Laying eggs is a function of the female chicken or bird.  There had, of necessity, to be first of all, the Form of the bird, before the function could follow.  Therefore, the chicken definitely came before the egg. 

 

All of these facts indicate most clearly, that natural selection, and much of what is termed adaptation, is nothing but a sophisticated blanket for what creatures do naturally by reason of their created natures.  In addition, every creature is created with certain defense mechanisms against internal toxins and external predators.  Every creature is supplied by the Creator with an immune system.  There is no such thing as a mythical “natural selection” agency or force at work to supervise or determine the changes in certain beings to direct and ensure their evolution to a higher, better and more “advantageous” state of being.  This fiction is a colossal fraud hiding the marvelous God-Created systems and mechanisms assuring the stability of the Order of Creation throughout time.  Finally, mutations or subtle changes or “mistakes” in the genetic code and its transmission can only be traced to the principle of disorder that is sin.  God created all things GOOD, and VERY GOOD, (Gen.1:31).  A certain very slow and almost imperceptible loss of energy efficiency was bound to be in operation in all of creation just by reason of its being finite, and over all of designated time.  This is known as the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics, with the First Law of conservation of matter/energy, both of which constitute the undisputed laws of all natural processes.  But the Original Sin of Adam and Eve introduced into the Natural Order, a Principle of Dis-Order for exceeding anything the 2^nd Law would require.  Sickness and eventual death, plus pain and fatigue, were not in the Original Plan of God had Adam and Eve been obedient. 

 

Mutations, then, can only be attributed to the consequences of Sin, both Original and Personal.  And, indeed, the exponential increase in the number and seriousness of diseases since the most ancient times is evidence aplenty of the consequences of sin, as disease and decadence progress together.