Penny Starr builds an entire March 18 CNSNews.com article around the complaint that a new Smithsonian exhibit called “What Does it Mean to Be Human?” — which examines human origins — lacks “references to God, creationism, or pre-natal existence.” Even worse, in Starr’s eyes, the exhibit “says fossils ‘provide evidence that modern humans evolved from earlier humans.'”
Starr went on to question the exhibit curator about “why the exhibit does not include any reference to God or address the debate – even in scientific circles – about Darwinian evolution,” and why “why an exhibit on human origins does not include any references to human beings as they develop from conception to birth in the womb.”
By contrast, when Starr wrote last October about a new documentary created by the right-wing activist group Citizens United “using in the founders’ own words to describe how God played a role in America becoming a nation of religious liberty and tolerance,” she merely noted that the film “is not a commentary on the Founding Fathers’ theology or lack thereof” but did not pepper narrator Newt Gingrich or producer David Bossie on why the film avoided addressing secularism among the Founding Fathers. Instead, she uncritically quoted Bossie as asserting that the film provides “an accurate reflection of history” and Gingrich’s claim that “It’s a story, which is in many ways, profoundly different than the secular version that is now authorized in the government schools.”
UPDATE: Right Wing Watch adds: “What’s next, a CNS article complaining that nowhere does the museum mention the fact that the world is only six thousand years old?”