FAITH UNDER FIRE
NEW BBC ANCHOR TAKES HEAT FOR CHRISTIAN FAITH
'Cannot be trusted to report objectively, or interact reasonably with interviewees'
Bob Unruh
A newscaster recently promoted by the BBC to a prominent co-anchor position is being mocked and deemed unqualified because of his beliefs regarding the origin of the universe.
The Crawley and Horley Observer in England reported on Wednesday that Dan Walker, who had been a sports presenter, will present the news on the daily morning TV show “BBC Breakfast.”
The report said he plans to continue working with BBC One’s Saturday lunchtime show “Football Focus.”
“I have watched [‘BBC Breakfast’] avidly over the years and am even looking forward to setting my alarm clock and doing what I can to make it even more successful,” Walker said.
But it took only hours for media to declare him unqualified because of his beliefs about creation, which he bases on his Christian faith.
Leading the attack was London Telegraph columnist Rupert Myers, who mocked Walker.
“Someone who is on the record as believing that the earth is flat would be an unlikely anchor of the BBC’s flagship breakfast news show. A news reporter who denied basic facts from the past such as the French revolution, the explosion of Mount Vesuvius, or the Holocaust would surely raise eyebrows at interview. Climate change denial, or a denial of heliocentrism, would be unlikely to find favor at the BBC,” he chided.
“And yet they have just selected a creationist to front their ‘Breakfast’ show.”
Myers, identifying himself as a Christian, said a “belief that the earth is between six and ten thousand years old, and that presumably God planted dinosaur skeletons in the ground to give us all something to talk about, goes well beyond the values for which people of faith can demand respect.”
“The only different between creationism and a church you could set up tomorrow which believes China doesn’t actually exist is that creationism has been around for a longer period of time.”
He said the BBC “has done nothing to explain how it has addressed this, beyond blind faith in the impartiality and objectivity of someone who denies the validity of an innumerable number of scientific consensus.”
“Viewers, aware of an anchor’s belief in creationism, would be forgiven for not trusting them to interview a paleontologist objectively, to present the latest findings on the age of perceptible space, or to discuss education or science policy with ministers,” he said.
The Times’ Elizabeth Rigy pointed out that the appointment “set tongues wagging.”
And at the London Express, Dominic Midgley pointed out that the 38-year-old also is refusing to work on Sundays.
“It remains to be seen how his new colleagues will react to the presence of such a devout Christian in their midst,” he wrote.
At the Spectator, however, Dan Hitchens cautioned that viewers should be slow to condemn.
“Anyone who thinks God made the world is a ‘creationist’ in some sense. … I badgered his spokeswoman, but she would only say that ‘Dan is a Christian who believes that God is behind creation,'” he wrote.
“St. Augustine … said 1,500 years ago that if something in the Bible obviously doesn’t align with the known facts, then it can’t be meant as a bald factual statement. He also warned Christians not to imagine the Bible was a scientific treatise – if they did, he said, people would laugh at them.”
He continued: “You can believe God made the world and still accept scientific findings. … Dan Walker could have done us all a favor here. He is open about his faith – ‘Everything I have comes from God,’ he said in a piece for a Christian website – and it plays a big part in his life: he once missed the Wimbledon men’s final because he thinks his Sunday should be given to God.”
He said that as for “the principle that irrationality should disqualify you from the breakfast TV sofa, this wouldn’t just apply to Christians.”
“There are people who believe there is no such thing as free will but still beat themselves up about their mistakes; who think you shouldn’t believe anything that isn’t scientifically proved, but constantly (and admirably) act based on unprovable ethical principles; who think human beings are just sacks of chemicals, but still devote their lives to helping them.”
Some readers commenting on Myers’ piece on the Telegraph site were not so generous.
“This reads [like] the whining of a tedious teenybopper with a collosal (sic) sense of entitlement demanding that the mean, nasty world justify why it dares impinge on his safe-space – this time, by allowing a creationist Christian (gasp) to read the news to him,” wrote “Simon.”
And “freeindeed” wrote: “It is actually evolutionists who ought to be held up to ridicule, given the way the preposterous is swallowed without blinking an eye. Here are Darwin’s own words: ‘I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.'”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/02/new-bbc-anchor-takes-heat-for-christian-faith/#5YjESjWsk6W4gQa6.99
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