Ken Miller is a Catholic, but he's also a scientist. The Brown University biology professor has written books on resolving religious faith with scientific fact, as well as smacking down "Intelligent Design" for its scientific illegitimacy.
A new Phoenix article paints Miller as beleaguered by theists and atheists alike, suffering at the hands of the religious for his scientific convictions and attacked by nonbelievers for having religion himself. That kind of persecution is enough to give somebody a Christ complex! The Phoenix piece tries to set up a fight between noted atheist Richard Dawkins and Miller, when Dawkins has actually lauded Miller for his opposition to Intelligent Design. It also picks and chooses quotes from various sources to prove its point while ignoring the substance of the issues. For example, the Phoenix quotes the popular science blogger PZ Meyers as being dismissive of Miller's work, when Meyers actually thinks Miller is pretty great, and even calls out the Phoenix for misrepresenting his take on the scientist.
We can get behind activists who support science. We can even support everyone's right to hold beliefs that aren't supported by evidence—as long as those beliefs aren't forced on others. What we can't get behind is twisting the facts, no matter which side does it, and the Phoenix piece seems to brush a little too close to doing this. Ultimately, pretending that science has any interaction with belief is to belittle science, and the distinction between the two realms. "Belief" requires no evidence. Science requires not just evidence, but repeated, consistent, verifiable evidence. This alone should clearly distinguish the two domains.
But where does journalism stand? In a tenuous medium between science and faith, perhaps. Journalism, ostensibly, requires facts, but is uniquely equipped to distort those facts—as in the Phoenix piece—to emphasize one side or the other. In journalism as in faith or science, readers should remember to treat all sides skeptically, finding as much confirmation as possible for reported "facts" and even opinions.
As Miller himself asserts, "I might be able to lay out graphs and charts and diagrams, to cite laboratory experiments and field observations, to describe the details of one evolutionary sequence after another, but to the true believers of creationism, these would all be sound and fury, signifying nothing." If your views are rooted in belief, not evidence, "The truth [will] always be somewhere else."
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