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Contributors
Cliff Kincaid- Contributor
Cliff Kincaid, serves as editor of the Accuracy
in Media (AIM)
Report. A veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff has
appeared on the Fox News programs Hannity & Colmes and
The O'Reilly Factor, where he debated O'Reilly on global
warming, the death penalty,
and the homosexual agenda. He was a guest co-host on CNN's Crossfire
(filling in for Pat Buchanan) in the 1980s, where he confronted
the then-Libyan Ambassador to the U.N. with evidence of Libyan
involvement in international terrorism. Through his America's
Survival, Inc., organization (www.usasurvival.org), he has been
an advocate on behalf of the families of victims of terrorism
and has published reports and held conferences critical of the
United Nations. His articles have appeared in the Washington
Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events, Insight, and
other publications. He served on the staff of Human Events for
several years and was an editorial writer and newsletter editor
for former National Security Council staffer Oliver North at
his Freedom Alliance educational foundation. He has written or
co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign
policy issues. Cliff is married and has three sons.[go to
Kincaid index]
 Former
Atheist Says God Exists
And the media pass...
[Cliff Kincaid] 12/23/04
It didn’t make news, on the front or back pages of leading
American newspapers, but Professor Antony Flew, a prominent British
philosopher who is considered the world’s best-known atheist,
has cited advancements in science as proof of the existence of
God. This is comparable to Hugh Hefner announcing that he is
becoming a celibate.
At a symposium sponsored
by the Institute for Metascientific Research, Flew said he
has come to believe in God based on developments
in DNA research. Flew, author of the book, Darwinian Evolution,
declared, “What I think the DNA material has done is show
that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily
diverse elements together. The enormous complexity by which the
results were achieved look to me like the work of intelligence.”
Associated Press distributed
a December 9 story by religion writer Richard N. Ostling about
Flew’s conversion. Flew
told AP that his current ideas had some similarity with those
of U.S. “intelligent design” theorists, who believe
the complexity of life points to an intelligent source of life,
rather than the random and natural processes posited by Charles
Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Flew’s statements have been covered in Britain, where
he is a professor, but we found nothing about his transformation
in major American newspapers such as USA Today, the Washington
Post, and the New York Times. Ostling’s status as a religion
writer may help explain why. The secular press considers this
a religion story.
To its credit, however,
the Seattle Times permitted Jonathan Witt of the Discovery
Institute to write a column noting Flew’s
conversion in the context of discussing the usually taboo subject
of the holes in Darwinian theory.
Witt noted that Darwin
and his contemporaries thought a single cell was a simple blob
of protoplasm and that it wouldn’t
have been difficult for nature to randomly produce something
so simple. “In those days the cell was a black box, a mystery.
But in the 20th century, scientists were able to open that black
box and peek inside,” he notes. “There they found
not a simple blob, but a world of complex circuits, miniaturized
motors and digital code. We now know that even the simplest functional
cell is almost unfathomably complex, containing at least 250
genes and their corresponding proteins.”
Darwin’s
Black Box is the title of Michael J. Behe’s 1996 book. Behe, a professor of biochemistry
at Lehigh University, emphasizes the complexity of molecular
systems such as the bacterial flagellum. Identified by electron
microscopes, it is what Behe calls an “irreducibly complex
system” that is necessarily composed of at least three
parts_a paddle, a rotor, and a motor. He argues that Darwinian
theory cannot account for it.
But those who believe in intelligent design or find gaping holes
in the theory of evolution frequently encounter a hostile press.
The Discovery Institute recently provided to Accuracy in Media
a thick file of complaints about the way their representatives
have been treated by the media, especially National Public Radio.
The Discovery Institute focuses on the issue of whether there
is any evidence of design in nature, rather than whether there
is a designer. Still, its representatives tend to be portrayed
in religious terms by the media.
Such a tactic is common operating procedure by the ACLU, which
is determined to portray any alternative to evolution as religious
and therefore not allowed to be taught or even discussed in the
public schools.
Back in 2001, when the Public Broadcasting Service aired the
seven-part series, Evolution, financed by Microsoft co-founder
and billionaire Paul G. Allen, it asked Discovery Institute scientists
to appear on the last segment dealing with God and religion.
It was a trick. The institute rejected this ploy, saying that
its representatives had scientific objections to evolution and
that they should be included in the scientific episodes.
PBS went ahead with
its one-sided program anyway. In response, the Discovery Institute
produced a 152-page viewers guide, noting
that the series distorts the scientific evidence, ignores scientific
disagreements over Darwin's theory, and misrepresents the theory’s
critics. Because the PBS series is still being marketed to high
schools around the country, the Discovery Institute critique
continues to be helpful and relevant. You can find it at: www.reviewevolution.com
PBS and the rest of
the media would be well-advised to follow the lead of Antony
Flew, who said that his life has been guided
by the principle of Plato's Socrates: “Follow the evidence,
wherever it leads.” Journalists can begin their investigation
of the Socratic principle by simply reporting the facts surrounding
Flew’s amazing evolution and the implications that his
statements have for a questionable theory that continues to be
taught as the Gospel in the public schools. tRO
copyright
2004 Accuracy in Media
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