Oliver,
You wrote “If some trees are older than 6,000 years (and the Earth is not flat) then this case is equally problematic for the Protestant Ethos as it is for the Catholic”. Of course, I did not think you seriously believed the Church had problems with the Earth not being flat, I just wanted to call your attention to the clumsy formulation.

As for “papal infallibility (in interpreting the scripture and doctrine), it is a much more complicated concept than, say, the “infallibility” (in interpreting Australian Law) of the High Court of Australia as the final court of appeal.” Nevertheless, “final court of appeal” is a good approximation. If papal infallibility was as simple as its denigrators seem to think it would not need a whole book (by Hans Küng) to “deconstruct” it on a professional, legal, level.

Dear David f,
Of course, you are right that the yin-yang complementarity does not fit into the list (which anyhow was irrelevant). It is more like a focusing tool to better picture reality, perhaps not unlike the triple of aesthetic, rational and ethical aspects or criteria I mentioned before. Or like a prism through which one gains a view that makes some things, relations, more comprehensible: neither completely arbitrary nor necessarily part of the structure of reality they are supposed to picture (I treat in the same, semi-subjective way the Hegelian dialectic of thesis-anti-thesis-synthesis).

>> many of us are at odds because we are focusing on definitions <<
One of my favourite jokes is that a mathematician first defines a concept and then makes statements about it, whereas a social scientist first makes statements about a concept and only then defines it. A debate makes sense only if one beforehand (implicitly) agrees on the meaning of the terms used, unless they are the very subject of the debate. I don’t understand how one “defines oneself by one criterion”.

On my homepage I state my “philosophical creed” as “Love of knowledge complements knowledge of love, or the yin in yang complements the yang in yin“.

George,

I think you will find that Yang-Yin complementarily does not work the way you have specified. An increase in knowledge would complemented by an increase in ignorance. An increase in love would be complemented by an increase in hate. This structure underlies folk practising moderation in Eastern societies.

Dan,

Newton’s take on the Creation was to examine the task before Moses. He held Moses needed to communicate God’s word and to be generally understood. In the latter case, Newton said, Moses wrote in the “vernacular” in the scriptures.

AJP,

The US is a curious case. Its founding fathers were religious, including Masons. Yet, we find the first substantial sectarian state. They prayed dutifully, yet almost exterminated the Indian clans, under the Manifest Destiny banner. On the other hand, Lincoln said maintaining the (secular) Union was more important than the moral issue of stopping slavery. I guess Humanism was bounded by centricities.

David f,

Lenin and Mao were untrue to Marx. Both skipped the Capitalist stage. Hitler and Mussolini were State Capitalists. There have been peasant rebellions in China centuries before Marx. There were slave rebellions in Rome. Foremost, I see the Four to be opinionated opportunists. Perhaps, only Hitler was clinically insane.
As for Marx, to the extent that his hypotheses have been tested, Marx has been wrong. I suspect we would agree on this point.

Oliver,
I never claimed the yin-yang complementarity insight “worked” for everybody. I made it very explicit in many words that it is “semi-subjective”. In another thread, when trying to explain my understanding of such “epistemology tools”, I borrowed from Paul Tillich: “The test of a phenomenological description is that the picture given by it is convincing, that it can be seen by anyone who is willing to look in the same direction, that the description illuminates other related ideas, and that it makes the reality which these ideas are supposed to reflect understandable. (Systematic Theology I, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1973, p. 106).

Hate does not complement love, it is its negation and I doubt whether the more people “love knowledge” the more will hate it. In the darkness-light metaphor for yin-yang, increasing (physical) light - e.g. by using a stronger bulb - does not lead to the increase of darkness, and vice versa.

Complementarity - at least in my understanding - is not the same as the relation between mutually exclusive pairs, nor is it the principle of action-reaction. It is sometimes compared to magnetic polarity, where you also cannot mechanically separate the two poles of a magnet.

Abstract philosophical insights that can be seen as achievements of our Western civilisation, often come from - and are reflected in - how common folk saw, and to some extent still sees, reality, (e.g. in naive approaches to religion as ersatz-science or naive approaches to science as ersatz-religion). The same about philosophical insights of the Chinese civilisation

George wrote: "I don’t understand how one “defines oneself by one criterion”."

Dear George,

That was expressed poorly. The definition is only partially by oneself. You have defined yourself as Catholic. That doesn't say too much as Catholics have a broad spectrum of views though they all owe allegiance to what they think Catholicism is. You have defined yourself further by the views you express. However, I think there are some people who have a stereotype of Catholic. They will place you in that stereotype whether you fit it or not ignoring your actual views and other attributes.

As far as definition goes Karl Popper gives an example in his book, "The Open Societies and its Enemies". A scientist engaged in a study of sand dunes will not want to get bogged down in a discussion defining a sand dune. He or she will title the project "Behaviour of piles of sand between 1 and 200 metres high thereby avoiding the necessity of defining a dune.

Oliver wrote:

"Lenin and Mao were untrue to Marx. Both skipped the Capitalist stage."

Dear Oliver,

Marxist theorists have dealt with that. They defined the revolution of February 1917 which overthrew the Czar and the revolution of 1911 which overthrew the Manchus as bourgeois revolutions. These were then followed by the "true" communist revolutions. Marxist theory now contends that communist revolutions are preceded by bourgeois revolutions. They are good as explaining contradictions away.

Oliver also wrote: Foremost, I see the Four to be opinionated opportunists. Perhaps, only Hitler was clinically insane.

I think Hitler embodied the spirit of the German people at that time more truly then the other three embodied the spirits of their people. If Hitler was clinically insane so were many Germans. By what standard do you judge Hitler to be clinically insane?

AJ,
You state that the reason you post is to stand in opposition to me. While this is kind of flattering, you’re a little out of step with most evolutionists who prefer to pretend there is nothing to debate.

In the 1980s Gish, Parker, and others held numerous creation/evolution debates in full auditoriums on US university campuses. By the accounts of many (including some of their opponents) they did pretty well until the evolutionists, who hold the status quo, wised up and realised it was usually counter productive to debate. It would be more gainful to assume victory.

I would be quite happy to acknowledge whenever you make a good point. However your posts mostly consist of misconstructions and denials of whatever I say.

I was about to mention something good that you said, about correlation not implying causation. But then I realised that you’d borrowed the point from David two posts earlier.

David,
I challenged Oliver, "Can you name one famous scientist from this period who didn’t believe 1) the Biblical Scriptures to be true and 2) the world was something in the order of 6,000 years old?"

You responded with the names Servitus, Bruno and Newton. However, I wasn’t sure if you were using them as examples or as counter examples to my challenge, as they all, by your account, conformed to the two propositions.

(Oliver offered a counter to Newton with his link, “If the Earth were formed as a hot molten ball of iron ….” which starts with a conditional clause, and so doesn’t read as an acceptance by Newton.)

That is not to say that we won’t find exceptions that prove the rule. And, of course, theories later arose for a more ancient earth. My main point was to counter some of the sentiment expressed on this thread that men of faith were often at odds with science. This is not the overall trend of history.

So when I mention the names of some of the countless scientists who don’t see any conflict with their faith, some may counter with ‘correlation does not imply causation’. This is true. But my thesis is that the overwhelming testimony of modern Western science is that faith has been more often than not a healthy accompaniment to good science.

Here’s just a few examples to follow on from what Oliver was saying about oxe carts and space ships.

Gene Cernan, the last astronaut to leave the moon surface, described his feelings on approaching earth, “I felt the world had too much purpose, too much logic, it was just too beautiful to happen by accident. … There has to be a creator of the universe who stands above the religions that we ourselves create to govern our lives.” Remembering that the Apollo astronauts were chosen for their flight engineering knowledge as much anything else, they knew good design when they saw it.

Two other Apollo astronauts, Duke and Irwin, became dedicated Christian evangelists after returning from the moon surface. And the scientist responsible, more so than any other for getting them there, the rocket scientist Von Braun, described himself as a young earth creationist.

David does then raise the important issue of persecution or undue influence pressuring and dissuading open and frank views and discussion.

This is a point I too was raising by mentioning the “Expelled” film. In the history of science, many have had to kick against the goads, or the binds of a set paradigm. This film shows a taste of the types of persecution many currently face for following their convictions of where the evidence is pointing, which includes severe threats against career or academic advancement.

Oliver,
You’ve continued to say that the Bible says that the earth is flat but you’ve never said where the Bible says this. The Scripture is plain. And I thought what I said was plain enough. I don’t believe natural history is a display of trickery.