Tuesday 9 February 2010

YEC dreck - 4 (Final)

Honestly, one could rabbit on about the gaping holes in Erich von Fange's book for months, and not exhaust the possibilities. But neither you nor I have the patience, and Evolution Sunday is this coming weekend. Here then is a parting shot.

Fange writes: The striking fact is that natives never seem to discover a new idea for themselves, nor do they modify anything in the slightest. When change has come to a community, it came from the outside. (p.47)

What racist drivel. Fange wisely omits to define what he means by "natives," but I suspect he has people of a different skin colour to his own in mind. On page 212 he gets explicit by referring to Africans as "natives." Why not blond Swedes? The truth is that all of us can trace our origins back to tribal communities: Angles, Saxons, Goths... The statement is garbage, and inherently illogical.

And let's be upfront about that term "natives." It's insulting and demeaning in contemporary useage. Only a moron in a hurry would use it in a serious work of non-fiction.

Racism seems to be an undercurrent in Fange's worldview. He clearly doesn't like the work of groundbreaking French Jesuit scholar Teilhard de Chardin. Fair enough, that's his right. But when it comes to blaming someone for the Piltdown hoax, Fange has Teilhard collared right from the start. Why Teilhard and not one of the English suspects?

The whole business seems contrary and out of character for an Englishman. (p.157)

Yes, it has to be the greasy little Frenchman according to the von Fange logic. One can only observe that Herr Doktor von Fange can't have met a great many Brits in his travels.

At times Fange seems to have "lost it" completely. Possibly due to watching too much on Fox News, Fange constantly divides the world up into Christians (by which he means bibliolatrous fundamentalists) and humanist liberals. In fact, the only reason evolution exists is that "the evolution belief system is designed not to explain the world, but clearly to attack and erode the faith and values of Christians." (p.265)

To put the kindest construction on this statement, one could call it myopic.

[I]f in the future Christians are burned at the stake, evolutionists will light the matches. (p.265)

Rampant paranoid delusions. Is this really the best that Concordia and the Missouri Synod can up with as a popular Creationist text?

(Note: rhetorical question. The answer is clearly yes.)

4 comments:

  1. Fange writes: The striking fact is that natives never seem to discover a new idea for themselves, nor do they modify anything in the slightest. When change has come to a community, it came from the outside. (p.47)

    I suspect that Fange is tiptoe'ing around the difference between Hunter Gatherer Societies VS Agrarian Societies.

    HG's usually live in moderate to warm climates, where the seasonal changes are not so dramatic, and who live (essentially) the same life year round.

    AG's are usually far away from the Equator and have a season to sow, a season to reap, and a season to sit around and eat what was grown the year before.

    From these scenarios, it is derived that HG's spend the entire year doing their HG thing, and everything is passed down from each generation as "the way it's done". AG's have a full quarter of a year where they sit on their butts and think of better ways to do things.

    This has always seemed a too simplistic for me to swallow.

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  2. YECkers, lend me your ears! Or, in this case, your eyes!

    165-MILLION-YEAR-OLD spider fossil found.

    I'm sorry, what was that about "Young Earth" again? Please, no more Herman Hoeh "pre-Adamic man" Gap Theory nonsense.......

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  3. "Natives" indeed! Does he not think stone-age "cave men" ever had advances in technology? Archeologists have identified vast improvements in stone tools, weapons and implements from the early stone age to the late stone age, as Mr. Flange could have found out with a little basic research. If he cared enough to find out some facts before forming his opinion.

    Oh, that's right. I forgot. There were no men living during the period of time archeologists call the "stone age". Mankind was created after that.

    Well, whoever was living back then sure invented some neat things.

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  4. Purple Hymnal said...

    “Please, no more Herman Hoeh "pre-Adamic man" Gap Theory nonsense.....”

    Would I dare???

    But you must admit that such ideas have vastly less problems than YEC!!!

    Like a ‘ho hum, what’s the problem’ to your spider revelations, for example.

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