Wednesday 3 February 2010

YEC dreck - 1

I came across Erich von Fange's In Search of the Genesis World a few weeks ago. What captured my attention about it was:
  • It's a creationist text, and I haven't tackled one of those in a very long time.
  • It's recent (copyright 2006)
  • It's published by Concordia Publishing House, official publishing arm of America's second largest Lutheran body (2.5 million members), the Missouri Synod.
Well, here was a chance to get up to date on what creationists are saying. Not backwoods snake handlers mind you, and not an author whose rant is part of a revivalist altar call. Fange has a PhD. from the University of Alberta, and is a former professor at Concordia College in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

For the last several days I've been working my way through it with a highlighter and a notepad at my side. I've got to concede that it's a remarkable book, though perhaps not quite in the way that Dr. von Fange intended.

The first thing to note - in view of the many "gap theory" afficionados who might frequent this blog (and you guys know who you are!) - is that Fange is an unapologetic Young Earth Creationist (YEC). But, wouldn't you know it, the name of a "gap" journalist (an Ambassador College graduate and Plain Truth writer) comes into his account, and is cited as an authority.

So, here begins a series of posts that will together constitute a review when complete. We'll travel to Tonga, climb aboard the great Andean mountain elevator, turn popular journalists into evolutionary experts, try to find Rhodesia on a map, rub shoulders with Erich von Daniken, and speculate on the lost continent of Mu and - especially exciting for a New Zealander like myself - discover fascinating, previously unknown details about Maori culture.

All this and more, beginning with part two!

5 comments:

  1. Interesting, especially in view of watching the Smithsonian channel last night on how Yosemite was formed.

    Spoiler Alert: It took more than 6000 years.

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  2. If you read about string theory or calculate the age of the universe by the decay of dark matter versus light mass particles, you can have either a very young or a very old earth, both solutions «provable» scientifically. It's just a matter of perspective.

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  3. Baywolfe, you must be mistaken. Perhaps God created Yosemite pre-aged! In other words, Yosemite was not created in new condition, it was created in a 2-million-year-old condition!

    See how easy this is when you can make up your own what-ifs and treat them like facts?

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  4. As a died-in-the-wool believer in the inerrancy of Torah, I know that when there are conflicts between Creationism and Science, one does better to trust Science. The Creation cannot lie and translations of the Biblical Creation account cannot tell the truth. It really is that simple.

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  5. As a died-in-the-wool believer in the errancy of Torah, I agree with Jack Sprat: when there are conflicts between Creationism and Science, 99.44% of the time Science turns out to be the one that's correct.

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