Former NY Times Writer Ridiculed for Being a Creationist

by Staff Writer

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After admitting she believes in the biblical view of creation, Yahoo! News writer Virginia Heffernan is enduring harsh criticism from fellow journalists.

After admitting she believes in the biblical view of creation, Yahoo! News writer Virginia Heffernan is enduring harsh criticism from fellow journalists. Heffernan, a former technology and culture writer for The New York Times, explained in an article for Yahoo! News last week why and how she became a creationist, saying she's read a variety of authors on the subject from the Bible to Darwin to Gould and finds that evolutionary psychologists "have become more contradictory than Leviticus."
"I am a creationist," she wrote. There, I said it. At least you, dear readers, won't now storm out of a restaurant like the last person I admitted that to. In New York City saying you're a creationist is like confessing you think Ahmadinejad has a couple of good points. Maybe I'm the only creationist I know."
But The Christian Post reported that a response article from writer Hamilton Nolan with Gawker.com delivered this harsh critique of Heffernan's beliefs: "We are not saying you're a bad person, Virginia, but you should probably expect that, from now on, when people read your musings on, say, the future of internet communications, they might stop, in a moment of gathering doubt, and recall that you are a science-phobic angel-believing climate change skeptic, and that therefore your dedication to facts is somewhat in question." This seems to represent the general opinion in the journalistic community of Heffernan's announcement, including writers from Telegraph, The Houston Chronicle,  Slatest and World Magazine.
In a recent article by Poynter.com, writer Andrew Beaujon commented that journalism needs more Christians if only to share—or at least not be hostile to—the faith in their writing. According to a 2007 Pew study, 8 percent of journalists at national publications and 14 percent of those at local publications reported attending worship services weekly, compared with 39 percent of the general public who reported the same. There are very few statistics available concerning the number of faithful journalists currently working in the field.