Rupert Murdoch’s National Geographic celebrates the Virgin Mary

[muriel_volestrangler]

Well, the erosion seems to be beginning already, as the latest issue of the magazine has a pretty worshipful article on Christianity: “How the Virgin Mary became the world’s most powerful woman.” It’s an article on Jesus’s mom and the many miracles and cures she’s supposedly wrought throughout the world—miracles that are described in detail and presented without criticism. Lourdes, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and now a vision of Mary by children in the village of Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina—all of these and more make their appearance.

Now it’s entirely possible that this article was written well before Murdoch took over, as there’s a lag time in the process (some of the incidents reported by author Maureen Orth were from last December), so I can’t be sure that the new regime is responsible for a piece that’s pretty much of a travesty. Nevertheless, I can’t be sure, either, whether the new ownership didn’t approve the final article as well as this cover and the execrable video embedded in the online version (see below):
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The only notes of doubt are the one-sentence claim by a physicist that the “spinning suns” associated with visions of Mary could be caused by sunlight reflected through charged ice crystals, and the warning that we can’t be certain that the Bible gives us correct details of Mary’s life because it was written a few decades after the fact. But there’s also no caveat that Mary (and Jesus) might not have been real, and no skepticism that these miracles could either reflect false reporting (as in the case that led to the beatification of Mother Teresa) or are rare spontaneous remissions. As many doubters have noted, none of the miracles involve regrowing limbs or eyes—things that never under any circumstances, religious or not.

It’s telling that the three-minute video that accompanies the online article features “researcher” Michael O’Neill, who just happens to run the website The Miracle Hunter, a site that seems to buy those miracles vetted by the Catholic church. O’Neill also has an apparently Christian-oriented radio show. In the video below, O’Neill (who I bet is a Catholic) seems overly credulous in accepting the reality of miracles that are officially approved by the Catholic Church. Get a load of it, and remember that it’s in National Geographic:

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/rupert-murdochs-national-geographic-celebrates-the-virgin-mary/

Skimming through, it does seem extremely credulous. NatGeo should be a fact-based publication, but, as Jerry Coyne says, "it’s a reprehensible osculation of faith by a formerly reputable magazine".