As if we all needed yet another reason to be absolutely disgusted by the New York Times, I present you with Exhibit A.
As first picked up on by The Resurgent, the Times chose a day smack in the middle of Holy Week (Thursday, to be exact) to slam "post-truth" Christians for peddling “fake news” in the name of their backwards, Bible-based religion.
Here’s what author Molly Worthen actually had the audacity to write:
Conservative evangelicals are not the only ones who think that an authority trusted by the other side is probably lying. But they believe that their own authority — the inerrant Bible — is both supernatural and scientifically sound, and this conviction gives that natural human aversion to unwelcome facts a special power on the right. This religious tradition of fact denial long predates the rise of the culture wars, social media or President Trump, but it has provoked deep conflict among evangelicals themselves.
Throughout her manifesto, Worthen haughtily criticizes Christians for living out their “Biblical worldview,” (which simply means that they live their lives according to the tenants and principles laid out in the Bible, gasp!), and accuses them of waging a “conservative evangelical war on facts.”
To do this, she relies on testimony from an ex-evangelical, several anti-Christian professors and a few select and heavily mocked quotes from a single Christian biologist. (I can only assume this is because debating a grounded Christian apologist would require effort beyond spouting one’s own opinion.)
“The phrase [Biblical worldview] is not as straightforward as it seems,” she claims. “Ever since the scientific revolution, two compulsions have guided conservative Protestant intellectual life: the impulse to defend the Bible as a reliable scientific authority and the impulse to place the Bible beyond the claims of science entirely.”
In this vein, those stupid, anti-science Christians, Worthen claims, use their stubborn Bible-clinging platform to purport that “climate change isn’t real, that evolution is a myth made up by scientists who hate God, and capitalism is God’s ideal for society.”
“Cynicism and tribalism are among the gravest human temptations. They are all the more dangerous when they pose as wisdom and righteousness,” she launches.
A few points to Ms. Worthen: Firstly, not all Christians deny the traditionally liberal definition of climate change; however, those of us who do base our dissent on the fact that man-made global warming has been scientifically proven a crock. We also don’t reject evolution as a “myth," nor do we assume that scientists hate God. We do, though, purport the universe did not suddenly spring up out of a puddle of bubbling gook that just mysteriously cropped up out of nowhere.
And, to your last point, capitalism in itself is not merely based on some Biblical mandate; it's simply the most successful economic model currently existing in a vastly imperfect world. But hey – you do you.
Ironically, Worthen’s one-sided diatribe exposes her own blatant hypocrisy. By accusing Christians of being close-minded to her box of “facts,” she inadvertently reveals her own un-budging faith on her own position, thereby committing the same intellectual crime she so repeatedly ascribes to Christians.
Then again, local clearly isn't Ms. Worthen's strong point.