In “Science, Too, Calls for a Leap of Faith” in the New York Times, Trevor Wax, managing editor of The Gospel Project, defends Virginia Heffernan, the science writer who got trashed for saying she was a “creationist.”
(Remember “Tech writer says she is a creationist—how long do you give her day job?”)
Actually, Heffernan crossed our radar in 2010. Here:
And while I found interesting stuff here and there, I also discovered that ScienceBlogs has become preoccupied with trivia, name-calling and saber rattling. Maybe that’s why the ScienceBlogs ship started to sink.
Recently a blogger called GrrlScientist, on Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted), expressed her disgust at the “flock of hugely protruding bellies and jiggling posteriors everywhere I go.” Gratuitous contempt like this is typical.
– Unnatural science, The New York Times
Trashing trolls is a dangerous business, and Heffernan doesn’t mind living dangerously, it seems. Anyway, Wax has this to say,
Interestingly enough, Heffernan did not take a position on how the world was created; she merely expressed her belief that the world was, indeed, created. This educated, rational human, like many others before her, claimed that it makes as much sense to believe in a creator as it does to believe the world came into existence out of nothing. For this, she was ridiculed.
Yet science neither proves nor disproves the existence of a creator. Evidence leads us only to a point, and then we draw conclusions. People like Heffernan look at the elements of our world that appear to be designed and purposeful, and conclude that a mind is supervising the matter. More.
Yes, but the science writers’ world is one in which believing that reality is an alien’s giant computer sim is rational but believing that the universe shows evidence of design is not. You couldn’t hoax many of them—they would end up believing whatever it is implicitly, just until the next nonsense rolls through.
The comments tell you pretty much everything about why the New York Times will disappear into a garage sale like the Washington Post just did.
And yet that girl still has a job, we think. Good on ya, kiddo!