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Thursday, February 22, 2007

Conservapedia?!

Wow, the wingnuts are really getting nuttier by the day. Alleging that Wikipedia has an anti-Christian and anti-American bias, some group of home-schooled kids in New Jersey started Conservapedia. Please note that I present this for humor purposes only, not because I think what they are doing is necessary or valid.

Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American. On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses. Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance. Read a list of many Examples of Bias in Wikipedia.

Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America. Conservapedia has easy-to-use indexes to facilitate review of topics. You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise answers free of "political correctness".

The science bloggers are all over this mess (here, here, here, here, and here for just a few), so I'll leave it to them to rip this site the much-needed new one.

The Questionable Authority, however, was too entertaining to pass up. Here is some of what was posted over there.

Before I get into my first look at the humor in the page, there is a serious reason to be (mildly) concerned about Conservapedia. It is representative of a philosophy that seems to be common among a wide range of right-wingers in the United States today: if reality doesn't match your ideology, rewrite reality and go from there. This would be sad and funny, were it not for the tragic fact that this group of nutcases still has an extensive amount of political clout.

Now, on with the accidental humour show.

One of the things that Conservapedia is very upset about is Wikipedia's failure to give Christianity credit for the Renaissance. They are so upset about this particular bit of pervasive and pernicious anti-Christian bias that they complain about it not once, but twice - on the main page and in their list of "examples of bias" found in Wikipedia. Strangely enough, though, the Conservapedia entry for "The Renaissance" - wait for it - doesn't give Christianity credit, and lists humanism as the "primary philosophy of the Renaissance." (If the page is edited to change that, you'll still be able to see it by looking at the history tab on the top of the page.)

I guess the liberal bias is so contagious that even they've caught a touch of it.

The real crime here is that a whole mess of home-schooled kids (those of wingnut parents) are going to get a [more] horrible education because their folks will rely on this mess of an "educational" resource rather than real books or real websites.

Maybe Sam Harris (no entry) or Richard Dawkins will drop by to rewrite some of the articles for them. That would be fun.


3 comments:

  1. there website is either down or has been taken down. hmm...

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  2. My guess is that some of the science bloggers have been messing with them -- most of them joined so that they could edit the entries.

    If you want to have a wiki, you have deal with its democratic nature.

    I wonder if they'll be back, or if they'll impose some kind of verified membership procedures?

    Peace,
    Bill

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  3. I tried to create an account just now (11:00pm Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time) and couldn't do so.

    Maybe they have it in lockdown mode?

    ReplyDelete