Media have always been biased, usually outrageously biased. All thinking people realize both liberals and conservatives are biased, although the liberal-dominated media in America point that finger at conservatives.
Though conservatives have a quasi-conservative news network, TV’s deck is quite stacked in favor of liberals. The three major news networks have been dominated by a left-wing worldview for decades, and if you don’t believe me, read extensively about Uncle Walter Cronkite. The next generation, people like Katie Couric, exist to push a left-wing bias.
Much of the new media generation, marinated for three decades in multi-culturalism, is also leading from the left. The subject for a future column will be the “progressive” leanings of Christian media.
For today, though, I’d like to take a quick look at how two worldviews concerning origins are presented.
An article link from Christian Retailing prompted my thoughts in this area. It seems that the company that produced Ben Stein’s landmark documentary, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” is going up on the auction block. Premise Media Holdings LP filed for Chapter 7 in late 2009.
It was the reaction to that announcement, and a look back at the critical comments surrounding the film that reminded me that the left is not only not losing strength, it is entrenched. The article, from Bankruptcy Beat, recounts some of the critics’ thoughts about “Expelled.”
Take Roger Ebert (please): “Stein … takes a field trip to visit one ‘result’ of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. ‘As a Jew,’ he says, ‘I wanted to see for myself.’ We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. ‘It’s difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place,’ he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.”
All of us have the capacity to see the world the way we want to see the world. If I want to contend that the main story of the Civil War is that England helped arm the South to some extent, that’s my right.
But I would be wrong. The Civil War was about many things, but the dominant story is that it was about the union of the states. It was about a series of blood-soaked battles.
England was a sidebar story.
Likewise, historical documentation will show quite clearly that not only Hitler, but other murderous dictators were schooled in Darwinian philosophy, and they applied some of those principles – study Herbert Spencer and his social Darwinism ideas – while hatching schemes to murder millions.
Roger Ebert doesn’t see it that way.
The sky is blue, Roger, not “mango.” Hitler absolutely applied Darwinian philosophy to his psychotic worldview.
Stein’s film was compelling, and what are we to make of his encounter with Richard Dawkins, the Thomas Huxley of today? With his questioning of Dawkins’ Darwinian dogma, Stein ideologically pulled Dawkins’ pants down around his ankles. Dawkins stumbled and stammered.
It is that kind of body shot that rankles evolutionists.
Whenever someone punctures the theory of evolution, he or she is subject to character assassination, so vested is the left in the philosophy of naturalism.
I have some knowledge of the rise of certain creationist organizations in the United States and by and large, they are staffed by sophisticated people that present lucid cases for special creation.
Creationists like Henry Morris, John Morris and Gary Bates might be swimming against evolutionary thought, and a film critic like Roger Ebert might believe he is qualified to compare them to Neanderthals … but their arguments are extraordinary. That is my bias.
Check out sites like www.creation.com and make up your own mind.
By the way, the New York Times – a dinosaur if there ever was one – had some choice words for “Expelled,” calling it “one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time … a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.”
That’s funny. Good one. The New York Times slamming someone is a pretty good indication that the target is right.
Having just finished an extraordinary book, “Banquet at Delmonico’s” by Barry Werth, I am reminded all the more that we all have our biases. Werth appears to be comfortable with evolutionary theory as a worldview, but he does a pretty good job of presenting both sides as he chronicles the rise of evolutionary teaching in the United States in the 19th century.
In “Banquet,” Werth brings to life the dour men of the black-and-white photographs (men like Huxley) and recounts their letters, lectures and personal foibles. For example, while spending quite a bit of time making the case that naturalist Louis Agassiz was simply wrong in opposing Darwin (Agassiz was the Victorian Ben Stein, or perhaps more precisely, the Victorian Gary Bates), he also makes it clear that the followers and colleagues of Darwin were pushing their own biases.
While on a U.S. lecture tour in the 1870s, Huxley visited the fossil collection of O.C. Marsh, a paleontologist from Yale, and it is obvious from Werth’s re-creation of their encounter that both men were intent on fitting the evidence to their worldview.
In the end, someone will be right and someone will be wrong. It’s just sad that one side has such a stranglehold on media in presenting their worldview. Let’s cheer on groups like the Institute for Creation Research and Creation Ministries International as they work to counter the left’s massive effort to impose the corrosive philosophy of naturalism on our culture.
