CURRENT EVENTS

To better illustrate how harmony can be helpful - and is indeed legitimate - let's consider a set of articles from two leading and trusted news magazines, Time and Newsweek. Below are excerpts from three stories from each magazine of the date September 30, 1996. The topics are:

The investigation into the crash of TWA Flight 800

TIME (P. 32): "A THEORY GONE TO THE DOGS"
"On Thursday investigators learned that on June 10 St. Louis airport police had used the plane as a testing facility for a bomb-sniffing dog, and that the tiny amount of chemicals used to test the dog could be the source of the residue found on the plane parts."

NEWSWEEK (P. 34): "GOING BACK TO SQUARE ONE"
"...senior officials at the Department of Justice admitted last week that the plane known as TWA Flight 800 had been used to train bomb-sniffing dogs only five weeks before its mysterious destruction July on July 17. That suggests an innocent explanation for the presence of RDX and PETN...in the wreckage of the doomed plane."

So let's play Bible critic and pick these apart. Was there just one dog (Time) or more than one (Newsweek)? Was it "investigators who learned" or "officials who admitted"? How could the date of the test been June 10 when five weeks before July 17 was June 12? Why are no chemicals named in Time where they are named in Newsweek? Why isn't St. Louis mentioned in Newsweek? It seems picky, but some of these are just like "errors" that Bible critics like to pounce on - such as the "women at the tomb" issue and the story of the healing of the blind men outside Jericho. As Matthew says "two blind men" where Luke and Mark say "a blind man," it is not said in the latter that there was ONLY one! Likewise, Time's story COULD be read to indicate just one dog, but not necessarily.

Possible poison gas effects on Gulf War veterans

TIME (P. 42): "THE GULF WAR POISONS SEEP OUT"
"For five long years, the Pentagon steadfastly insisted there was no evidence that U.S. soldiers were exposed to poison gas during the Gulf War..."
"(Symptoms) includes chronic fatigue, joint ailments, rashes and memory loss."

NEWSWEEK (P.38): "A MYSTERIOUS MALADY"
"Is Gulf War syndrome a single illness? If so, what causes it, and how many veterans are afflicted? Government agencies have spent five years and $80 million pursuing those questions."
"(Symptoms) include joint pain, tremors, fatigue, memory loss, and intermittent diarrhea..."

Here's one for the government conspiracy theorists! Was the government denying the problem, or pursuing a solution? Obviously, it was doing both simultaneously, as we know. But a historian digging up copies of these magazines 2000 years from now might think that there was an error in the texts. And then there's the lists of symptoms - contradictory or complimentary? The latter, definitely; but in each case, the writers of the article just put down what they thought was most important - just as the Gospel writers sometimes did.

The discovery of a North Korean sub off of a South Korean beach

TIME (P.44): "THE SPIES FROM THE SEA"
"..one night last week, a South Korean taxi driver spotted something like a whale wallowing in the surf."

NEWSWEEK (P. 40): "REDS ON THE ROCKS"
"Just after midnight last Wednesday, a taxi chugging along the Kangnung highway on the east coast of South Korea threw its headlights briefly on a group of young men sitting by the roadside..."
"(After dropping off a passenger and returning to the site, the driver said he saw) 'something that looked like a dolphin or a submarine' and called police."

Note how quickly Time deals with this matter, whereas Newsweek delves into some intricate details - just as Mark gives short shrift to some stories that Matthew and Luke expand upon greatly. Note, too, this difference: Was what the driver saw like a whale, or like a dolphin, or like a submarine? Could the persons translating what the Korean taxi driver said have misunderstood or given their own interpretation to their respective reporters?

If skeptics accord these magazines the same treatment as they do the Bible, then to be consistent they must also say that these magazines are untrustworthy. (Of course, there are some skeptics who don't believe ANYTHING they read!) But isn't it more charitable to assume that we have misunderstood something, and look for the solutions to the alleged problems?