The Times they are Not a-Changin’

The US newspaper The New York Times has not had a recent history of portraying Bible-believers in a fair light. In the wake of the presidential election, for example, the Times has given many column inches to its writers to lament America’s “cultural divide” (often portraying it as “the Christians vs. all the others”) which the election supposedly exposed, as evangelical Christians helped re-elect President George W. Bush.

As we reported a few weeks ago on this website (see Evolution, the Election and the “Enlightened”), even its guest columnists, like well-known historian Garry Wills, have sometimes been shrill in expressing their concern over the apparent clout of the evangelical voting bloc. Wills was shocked to learn, for example, that there are now more Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth than they do Darwin’s evolutionary belief system. He is deeply concerned that this “unenlightened” group now has such an influence on US society and might impose its biblical views on it.

AiG submitted a letter to the Times’ editor right after the Wills’ commentary appeared. As far as we know, the AiG letter never appeared either on the website of the Times or in the printed version. (See the second letter, below, that was submitted.)

Instead, the Times chose to post and print other letters, mostly anti-Christian ones, including this one directly below (in its entirety). AiG has annotated it so that you can become better aware of how evolutionists, even this apparently well-educated MD below, are defending their faith, using both urban myths and a faulty view of the nature of the origins question.

To the Editor:

In August 1999, when the Kansas Board of Education decided to delete the teaching of evolution from the state’s science curriculum,

[Note: Absolutely false. The Kansas board of education in 1999 only mildly de-emphasized the teaching of evolution, and it later updated its standards to be even more pro-evolution; the 1999 curriculum standards actually contained many references to evolution; see Confusion in Kansas—Evolution not Outlawed!]

… I consoled myself with the hope that the efforts to sequence the genomes of humans and other organisms would soon demonstrate the reality and beauty of the process of evolution.

[Note: Evolution—a beautiful process? What beauty is there in a bloody struggle for survival over evolution’s supposed billions of years?]

But as noted by Garry Wills and demonstrated by the impact of religious conservatives on this election, our nation has lost its critical intelligence and respect for evidence.

[Note: The creation/evolution controversy is not about the evidence itself, but how to interpret the evidence. Evidence itself says nothing; it must be placed within some preexisting context, interpreted within that presuppositional framework and then conclusions might be offered. See Searching for the “Magic Bullet”.]

Today, most of us have access to the DNA evidence that shows our common heritage with the animals with whom we share this planet.

[Note: Read the following section from AiG’s The New Answers Book about this topic of homology, and discover a better explanation concerning the physical similarities among creatures, which points to a common Designer of animals and human beings: Is Natural Selection the Same Thing as Evolution? What About Similarities and Other Such Arguments for Evolution?-->]

What has become of us that we choose to believe the stories of fundamentalists while remaining blind to the realities of nature that stare us in the face?

Mary K. Crow, M.D., New York, Nov. 4, 2004

[Note: Again, see our article about evidence and how one inevitably has to interpret what “stares us in the face”: Searching for the “Magic Bullet”.]

Now, here is the letter to the editor that The Times chose not to use:

Dear Editor:

Garry Wills’s lament (Nov. 4) is that the reelection of President Bush was largely due to a big turnout of Christian voters who are not “enlightened.” He also offers the silly, hackneyed analogy of America’s “fundamentalist zeal” resembling the “rage” found in the Muslim world and in Al Qaeda!

As his primary example of “unenlightenment,” Wills writes that many Americans reject Darwin. Ironically, he cites the signers of the Declaration of Independence as products of “enlightenment values” (which Christians supposedly lack), yet he doesn’t mention a key phrase in the Declaration that states that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” As a historian, Wills should also be aware that the “enlightened” Founding Fathers believed (or, at the very least, respected) the Bible, including Genesis.

Today, there are thousands of practicing scientists who reject evolution and accept Genesis. In fact, several Ph.D. scientists are full-time staff members with our organization.

Mark Looy
Vice President of Outreach
Answers in Genesis