The Hidden Agenda

Walking through the mall last night, I visited a favorite outdoor supply shop of mine. Which one isn’t important, but they carry lots of great stuff, emphasis on the stuff because not one item in there is really essential for life. Which I find somewhat entertaining as it considers itself a ‘nature store.’ They have backpacks that turn into suitcases – pointless as I use a backpack for a suitcase now anyway (much to my wife’s dismay) – they have climbing shoes, hiking shoes, walking shoes, lounging shoes, shoes shoes. They have compasses, freeze dried ice cream (yay!) and a book section where you can get maps, bird guides, and of course, National Geographic.

National Geographic tells you everything you need to know about “the real world” (and you thought that meant your office). The NGS wants to help you understand the world around you. What does nature consist of? How do things work? Who and what is out there, and how do you fit in it all?

I think though they want you to understand something else, something they cannot come right out and say.
What? A hidden agenda you say?
Everyone has a hidden agenda. Maybe ‘undisclosed plan’ is a more neutral of putting that; after all I don’t mean to judge. But I do want to make you aware of the message they convey behind the one they print. The one that says there is no real choice in the origins debate; that the only real option is Naturalistic Evolution. This is the worldview they want you to have as your own – the theory, philosophy and all that the worldview implies. I.e. you come from (read, are) pond scum and anything supernatural is preposterous.

I have a reasons to make such a bold claim. Even if you don’t agree, or even if NGS isn’t aware of their implications (doubtful), I want you to be aware. Below are two cases in point:

The Bookshelf Nook

First, take a look in the wee dark, secluded corner of the aforementioned book section (pictured below).

Under the large desk reference books, to the right of the documentary DVDs, wedged in between the Galaxy Postcards and the cat/dog poker decks (?) stand two books that National Geographic obviously feels you need to read but don’t want to make a big fuss over. “The Lost Gospel of Judas” and “The Gospel of Mary, the disciple who loved Christ”. Note, they don’t have a whole section on religion. No Bibles, no Qur’an even. Just the ‘historical’ books that one needs to know the ‘historical truth’ of Christianity. Very kind of the National Geographic to provide such reading material to accompany me on my trip wherever.
Either of these books is about as far from ‘historical Christianity’ as one can get. They are Gnostic works that come from sometime in the Third Century, far removed from practically anything actually Christian. Indeed scholars don’t even know which Mary the “Gospel of Mary” refers to! Tom Wright points out in Who Was Jesus ‘these works tell us nothing about early Christianity, nor anything at all about Christ, but they tell us plenty about the Gnostics who wrote them.’ Both are amazingly thick books for works that only exist in scraps.

A Monkey’s Uncle

A few years ago, I was on the phone with someone who said their knees and hips hurt more and more as they got older.
“You know, we just weren’t meant to stand upright,” they said. I asked where they heard that.
“I read it.”
“Where?” I asked. (Guess the answer.)
“National Geographic.”
I asked what they thought that meant.
“That we weren’t meant to stand upright,” they repeated.
Notice, they repeated it, probably indicating that they didn’t understand what it meant. National Geographic had actually said somewhere that humans were not ‘meant’ to stand upright. Meaning that we were meant to do something else? I.e. walk on all fours or climb in trees or whatever. Do you catch the fallacy? Naturalistic Evolution, as currently defined (it does change to fit the need), is an unguided process. It cannot have purpose or meaning; nothing can be supposed or intended without a Intender. For a ‘scientific’ magazine to make apparently definitive claims of what something was meant to do is no longer a scientific claim but a metaphysical one. Declaring purpose where none can be found is a clear window into one’s world view. And it is very clearly a statement of agenda. Obviously Paleontology is a real science, I’m not saying that it isn’t. The NGS has moved from discussing Paleontology to Origins in a single bound, hopefully without the reader noticing the jump.
“Clearly the shape of this australopithecine hip bone shows there is no god.” What?

This is just silly logic of titanic proportions. Stuck between the lines and in bookshelf nooks to be read but not really seen lies the National Geographic Society’s hidden agenda.