Church Voices

Lets say you were witnessing an on-line debate between an atheist and a Christian over the existence of God. The Christian enters into evidence a series of conclusions reached by several prominent scientists, the atheist sneers, “Furthermore, as for the scientists, isn’t this the community that still claims that Kyoto will work to eliminate the imaginary problem of global warming?”. Does this strike anyone as odd?

For anyone who hasn’t kept up with the state of science this isn’t surprising at all. With (now former) atheists like Anthony Flew conceding the power of the Teleogical and Cosmological Argument in light of new cosmological findings the tension between science and Christianity is looking downright cuddly. Sure there’s still some sticky issues, much as there is with any relationship that is somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 anniversaries. But the atheistic-science-Christianity love triangle is looking more and more like a science-Christianity re-unification dinner. The really sad part is that this issue has been completely overlooked.

Just in the last few weeks we’ve been treated to Newsweek’s assault on the historicity of the Christmas story (or is that holiday story?), and the Washington Post’s front page hit piece on Intelligent Design (nicely dissected by Hugh Hewitt). But those are hardly new stories. Since the late 1800s deists, agnostics and atheists have launched an all-out attack on Christianity using science as their weapon of choice. And now, through a stunning reversal of fortunes, like some sort of kung fu master using his opponents own attacks against him Christians are using science to advance Christianity.

But the number of stories from the main stream media about this is underwhelming to say the least. Instead we get tired recycled stories that have been done to death, and are, at best, shoddy reporting. Anthony Flew eschews atheism in favor of theism, swayed by arguments generated largely by science and we get hackneyed reporting that acts like the Jesus Seminar hasn’t been gutted both in terms of membership and ideology.

Why should anyone take these publications seriously anymore? Reading the main stream media tells me far more about how the main stream media thinks than it does about what’s going on in the world.