This article describes the Vatican accepting evolution as a complementary idea to creationism. The summary lead was a good choice to use, but it was a little too wordy for me. It could easily have been broken into two or three sentences, which would be much easier to read. The author mentioned Charles Darwin in the first sentence, which is OK, since Darwin is well known. However, it seems a little redundant to me to mention evolutionary theory and Darwin, since they are so closely related in the reader’s mind.
The article is newsworthy because of timeliness. It celebrates the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.” It mentions the various professionals participating in the conference. To me, this is completely unnecessary, since the author does not say how these people relate to the conference. What do paleontologists and molecular geneticists have to do with creationism?
The article also has a source issue; there is only one source. For starters, the author started out by mentioning the source, and then quoting him. The source is unknown to nearly all people, so the person should really follow the important information given in the quote itself. Also, Cardinals William Levada’s credentials should be placed in front of his name. If we knew that he was head of the Doctrine of Faith for the Vatican, we would place more value on his quote.
The author briefly mentions why the church does not accept the theory of Richard Dawkins, but it does not say what his theory was. It seems like a last minute addition to the article. Levada says that the theory is “absurd and not at all proven.” Religion is not something you can prove to be true or false, thus contradicting all that was previously said. All in all, I think this poorly-written article gave the reader the basic facts, but nothing more.
This article appeared in The News-Gazette on March 4, 2009.
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You make interesting observations. How about some more posts?
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