Thursday, October 06, 2005

Herald to Science: Know Your Role

Josh writes:

Here's something odd:

So Tristan at About Town mentions this story about Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a man whose words have in the past been taken as support by proponents of intelligent design. According to the article, his latest lecture clarified his position to state that he's all in favour of the theory of evolution:

Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn said he could believe both in divine creation and in evolution because one was a question of religion and the other of science, two realms that complemented rather than contradicted each other.

"That's odd," says I, having just read this story in the Herald, which reports on the same story, only puts much more emphasis on the Cardinal bagging evolution and cautioning science not to overstep its boundaries:
A senior Catholic cardinal and champion of "intelligent design" has criticised the "limits" of science in its quest for the truth.

Vienna's Christoph Schoenborn said science studied what was observable and scientists overstepped their boundaries when they concluded Darwin's evolution theory proved there is no creator [scientists have concluded no such thing, but that's another issue].

Like I say, odd.

About Town's Paul then supplies the Reuters article that both stories were taken from, examination of which shows that Xtra has quoted it faithfully, while the Herald has played with it a bit to give it a different angle. I haven't noticed the Herald being any more biased in favour of ID than most news outlets (given that we're talking about an industry that will put a boulder on one end of a see-saw and a pebble on the other and call it "balance") -- what's their game?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is up with the herald?

Yesterday I was shocked by this article about pomegranates

Now I may not be the most studied when it comes to greek myths, but this paragraph

"There is nothing new in the world, and, as ever, the Greeks were there first. Persephone, the goddess of agriculture, was offered a pomegranate by Hades. Once she had eaten it, it was her destiny to stay with Hades in the underworld for all time."

Filled me with a burning rage!

Josh said...

Well technically, since half of infinity is still infinity, there's no real difference between "for all time" and "for half of all time", so -- no, I'm just not pedantic enough to go through with this.

Apathy Jack said...

Yeah, the Herald putting an entirely innaccurate spin on things.

What's next: Green grass? Blue sky? I shudder to think...

Matthew R. X. Dentith said...

Especially since the Ancient Greek conception of infinity differs from our own the translation is actually apt.

Anonymous said...

"Now I may not be the most studied when it comes to greek myths"

I stand defeated and in isolation.

I bow my hat to you sirs.