User talk:Piet2006

Being both of christian persuasion and believing that reality is created by God, the question immediately arises with me how Dooyeweerd's philosophy relates to both young earth and old earth creationism.

It appears to me that Dooyeweerd operates from a completely different angle.

Old Earth Creationists (e.g Ross, Strobel, The Design Institute) argue that a long string of cause and effect proves that there must be a first cause, which cannot be anything else but God. From a Dooyeweerdian perspective cause and effect are energy-movement related realities and as such have been created as well. Hence, this commonplace physical realtity cannot have a link with anything before cause-effect existed. This buries the traditional proof of theism.

How does creation then manifest itself as creation?

Dooyeweerd, in terms of his 15 modalities, argues that each modality contains both a law side and a subject side. To the lawside one finds, in every one of the modalities, an irreducible kernel that defies all further logical analysis and thus stand as an original. Hence a final boundary or foundation to scientific thought, is Dooyeweerd's proof of creation. Thus, although Dooyeweerdian theory has a lot to contribute to physics and mathematics, it will not firstly look at the subject side of things, as do creationists.

What always remains a problem to me is this: What makes this vision essentially christian? The reason I question this is the following: Dooyeweerd basically argues that once the human self is freed from the baggage of traditional philosophy and its "-isms" it is open to the lawside realities of both nature and human society.

Now is such a freedom uniquely christian? Almost all scientific traditions aspire in some way or aother to free the mind so that reality can be seen for what it essentially is. While Pauline Christianity makes a lot of the new creature, renewed mind, sacrificing the old life, one can also ask if all other traditions attempting a state of "tabula rasa" is not essentially searching after the same thing. What about Buddhist meditations that also strives for a blank state so that a position of spiritual liberation can be achieved. And spiritual liberation, it appears to me, is what brings one in tune with not only the virgin nuances of creation, but also with the creation-deposited powers deep inside ourselves.