Here's another item I missed last week, from The Guardian (UK): "Archbishop: stop teaching creationism."
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has stepped into the controversy between religious fundamentalists and scientists by saying that he does not believe that creationism — the Bible-based account of the origins of the world — should be taught in schools.
Giving his first, wide-ranging, interview at Lambeth Palace, the archbishop was emphatic in his criticism of creationism being taught in the classroom, as is happening in two city academies founded by the evangelical Christian businessman Sir Peter Vardy and several other schools.
"I think creationism is … a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories … if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there's just been a jarring of categories … My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it," he said.
Score one for the archbishop. And while you're at it subtract one from Stephen Bates, the Guardian's "religious affairs correspondent," for a horrifically garbled, question-begging and misleading lead sentence. Bates' assertion that creationism is "the Bible-based account of the origins of the world" is immediately contradicted by the head of the third-largest Christian denomination, Archbishop Williams, who plainly states that creationism is not a Bible-based account but, rather, a grave threat to "the doctrine of creation."
Subtract one also from the Guardian's copy desk for botching the subhead to the article: "Williams backs science over Bible."
Neither Bates nor the copy editor who wrote that subhead seems to have bothered to read the third paragraph of this article. Williams, explicitly, rejects the phony creationist notion that one must choose between science and the Bible as an either/or. Bates and his headline writer both seem to have thoroughly accepted this framing of the matter by the creationists. They embrace and repeat what Williams says is "a kind of category mistake." And they seem to have little understanding of what it is that most Christians — including the standard-bearers of orthodoxy — actually believe.
I've complained before about this kind of sloppy, ignorant reporting on religious matters. Others who make this complaint see such sloppiness as evidence of a bias against fundamentalist-style believers. Note, however, that in this case the sloppiness results in a bias in favor of the fundies
Williams does not back science over the Bible. He backs the Bible over biblicism. He backs science over science-ishness. Or, as Stephen Colbert might say, he backs truth over truthiness.
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On a semi-related note, I've added Ijtihad to the blogroll. It's not a blog per se, but rather Dr. Muqtedar Khan's Web site on "Islam and global affairs." Khan explains his understanding of the term Ijtihad here, writing:
For modernist Muslims … ijtihad is about freedom of thought, rational thinking and the quest for truth through an epistemology covering science, rationalism, human experience, critical thinking and so on. … Thus, modernist Muslims see ijtihad as the spirit of inquiry and desire for all forms of knowledge, not just religious and juristic, that needs to be revived to revitalize and restore Islamic civilization.
The religious affairs correspondent for The Guardian would probably twist that into something like "Khan backs reason over faith," but I don't think that's what he's getting at at all.
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