Twice a year, when my NPR station has its fundraising drives, I switch over to the local socialist network, to remind myself that I’m really not that liberal…Also, whenever I’m at my parents’ or my sisters’, I read their right-wing magazines & newspapers. Both of these, I feel, help remind me that not everyone thinks the way I do. We generally surround ourselves with people (and news sources and blogs) that think the way we do, so the following opinion may be skewed, but I do try to branch out.
The last few weeks, while here at MoF we’ve been (rightly) dissing Creationism, I’ve been hearing an awful lot of off-hand remarks about evolution in my other news sources. Wired (not a conservative bastion, admittedly) blithely tells me that “400 million years ago…plants…evolved” when they moved from the ocean to the land. NPR mentioned evolution in an offhand manner recently, too, but I don’t have the exact quote. Neither of these were stories about evolution or Darwin. Which made me think: creationists must hate regular media…
4 responses so far ↓
1 Elaine // Nov 27, 2007 at 11:12 am
Among the creationists I know, they see (what they see as) the constant casual references to evolution and an ancient earth in the media as another way that secular culture continues to persecute them. Some (not all) of them consider it to be a conscious conspiracy to indoctrinate people in the dogma (their term) of evolution.
I do think you are correct, xJane, that it is important to not just expose ourselves to things that we know ahead of time that we are going to agree with. And I try to do that. But I draw the line at watching FOX Noise…erm, News channel. Just can’t do it.
2 John // Nov 27, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Harry Potter is another item that saturates our culture that a lot of conservative Evangelicals are opposed to. By setting up this antagonism between their brand of Christianity and these popular phenomenon, they have powerful, constant means of reinforcing their identity in opposition to mainstream secular culture.
3 xJane // Nov 27, 2007 at 1:38 pm
yeah…I can’t watch Faux News either…although the persecution line really annoys me. It’s difficult for me to believe the persecution complexs of people who run the country/media/elections. But, maybe that means I have a persecution complex
4 xJane // Nov 29, 2007 at 8:29 am
some evolutionary comedy
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