Conservapedia
Human reproduction serves to create new human beings and with these human beings comes a soul. The soul appears with the person at the moment of conception, making him a complete human being from the very start. This is why abortion is considered murder: the abortionist has rent the soul from a living human body, the soul being the source of a full life for human beings. If there was no soul present in the human at the time of conception and it entered the body at some later stage, then until that moment the fetus would hypothetically be nothing more than an animated body, similar to how animals and plants are alive but without souls. Thus, if this were the case, abortion would not be murder, but rather a termination of a non-human entity, at least until the soul finally joined the body. However, there is no evidence that the soul can enter the body at any time later than conception. Since the soul is intrinsic to human beings, it absolutely must be present at conception and therefore abortion is murder.
Human Reproduction, Conservapedia
Conservapedia is the conservative point of view Wikipedia. Calling it that is an insult really. Conservapedia says that wikipedia is far too liberal in its point of view, but really wikipedia's entire structure is focused on looking at all things at a neutral, non-partisan, NPOV: The cornerstone of wikipedia, it essentially allows any contestable statement that takes a position on a statement rather than just relays the facts, and even that can be shown to be violations of the NPOV. Any NPOV occurrence can be flagged and will get examined seriously.
Conservapedia is response to the NPOV, essentially: It thinks neutral points of view do not reflect reality, with reality actually being more conservative. Here are 3 of the rules from conservapedia that kind of demonstrate their style somewhat:
8. We do not attempt to be neutral to all points of view. We are neutral to the facts. If a group is a terrorist group, then we use the label "terrorist" but Wikipedia will use the "neutral" term "militant".
9. We do not allow liberal censorship of conservative facts. Wikipedia editors who are far more liberal than the American public frequently censor factual information. Conservapedia does not censor any facts that comport with the basic rules.
10. We allow original, properly labeled works, while Wikipedia does not. This promotes a more intellectual atmosphere on Conservapedia. On Wikipedia, observations based on personal experience and interviews have been dismissed as "original research". Here, we do not restrict research for articles in that manner.
It's... infuriating is not a suitable word, really, it's just spreading damnable lies to people. This is a great example in response to the idea of human sexuality at all. This was on the talk page, outside of view of the average visiting netizen:
>add something benign, perhaps along the lines of:
Sexual intercourse is the mechanism by which human beings mate and produce offspring. The Penis enters the Vagina, the male's sperm fertilises the female's egg, and the child forms in the womb. There can hardly be the slightest objection to something as simple as that, a matter-of-fact description for children of how we all came to be.
>I anticipate plenty of objection. For a start, tell a child or young teenager how, and they might want to try it. It also means we have to make articles on mate, penis and virgina, tripling the contriversy. Here's an idea: Disappear the lot. Delete the page, prevent it ever being created again. Do the same for everything that deals with human sexuality
An encyclopedia that just wants to BLACK OUT any mention of sexuality. It's amazing.
Anyway, my main beef is their article on evolution. Perhaps no other article makes its bias more clearly known. It lists every single backwoods forum argument people give against evolution, and talks about public opinion on whether or not evolution is true like that is some solid indicator of its truth. It lists a handful of particular things that sound suspicious that aren't really, or casts aspersions on Darwin and evolutionary scientists or notes particularly unethical scientists and presents them like they prove that evolution is fault. It lists absolutely zero facts that support evolution, despite the hundreds of thousands of them available.
And a while back, they got into an argument with one of the scientists behind the experiments that led to a bacteria evolving a capability to metabolize citrate.. A common conservative POV chestnut about evolution was that evolution has only been observed reducing a genome rather than increasing it -- something that could only be done by an 'intelligent designer' or 'some other unexplained process'. (They're never very vague about who this intelligent designer might be.) Lenski's bacteria did indeed increase their genome and develop a new mechanism: The ability to process citrate.
I would say that find is a nail in the coffin for creationism, but I mean, we're not even at that stage. The mouth has been stuffed with garlic and the head cut off, the body burnt, the head thrown in the coffin and nailed shut, and buried under twenty feet of poured reinforced structural concrete more years ago. Every day, more things come by that confirm the theory of evolution, and nothing that refutes it. Evolution by natural selection is as close of a fact as gravity is or the expansion of gas in a cylinder. Even a comment in that SLOG article, the poster says, 'If it takes decades just to develop a single major change, how long would it possibly take to develop a whole organism?'. Very long indeed: But we have a few billion years to work with. 500 similar complex changes could occur in just 10,000,000 years: A practical hop-skip-and-a-jump by geological time scales.
The people who write this anti-evolution stuff must be well aware that evolution is true. To look at the evidence is to know it's true: There's just no denying it, no pretending it is a gigantic deception. And they make the choice that the deception is better for people than the alternative, and go ahead with it, set out actively to mine evolution for any particular point that would sound good on paper and stick in people's minds: The wedge strategy, to convince the uneducated and force the issue onto the public scene. These people are literally destroying the education of millions. They are like anti-teachers.
And they have the... audacity to sit there on their front page and brag about a journal's comment that:
"The percentage of people in the country who accept the idea of evolution has declined from 45 in 1985 to 40 in 2005. Meanwhile the fraction of Americans unsure about evolution has soared from 7 per cent in 1985 to 21 per cent last year."
I don't know what we are supposed to do in response to people like this. In Guy Harrison's 50 Reasons book, he mentions that people who think evolution isn't true don't need debates, they need education. He says if somebody told it to him in his house, he'd just point to the cro magnon, neanderthal, and other replica skulls he has on his shelf and say, 'Well, then, I wonder who those guys were?'
I agree with him to a point -- the individual people contaminated by the wedge strategy don't need debates, they need education, education they've been told is being waged by biased scientists who want to push their agenda and drown the truth. (What self-respecting scientist could really want to drown the truth on something, to inhibit decades of progress?? Certainly not nearly EVERY intelligent, sane scientist?). Arguments of reason are useless to these people anyway: They have something they just want to believe is true, as much as they want to believe that Obama is going to kill all Christians in the country. It's scary stuff. But the people who are perpetrating this fraud on them, pushing this kind of anti-knowledge on them... It just seems awful, I don't know what to make of it. I am sure they think they are doing the right thing, but I can't imagine how so many could adopt a mindset like that. It makes my skin crawl.
Human Reproduction, Conservapedia
Conservapedia is the conservative point of view Wikipedia. Calling it that is an insult really. Conservapedia says that wikipedia is far too liberal in its point of view, but really wikipedia's entire structure is focused on looking at all things at a neutral, non-partisan, NPOV: The cornerstone of wikipedia, it essentially allows any contestable statement that takes a position on a statement rather than just relays the facts, and even that can be shown to be violations of the NPOV. Any NPOV occurrence can be flagged and will get examined seriously.
Conservapedia is response to the NPOV, essentially: It thinks neutral points of view do not reflect reality, with reality actually being more conservative. Here are 3 of the rules from conservapedia that kind of demonstrate their style somewhat:
8. We do not attempt to be neutral to all points of view. We are neutral to the facts. If a group is a terrorist group, then we use the label "terrorist" but Wikipedia will use the "neutral" term "militant".
9. We do not allow liberal censorship of conservative facts. Wikipedia editors who are far more liberal than the American public frequently censor factual information. Conservapedia does not censor any facts that comport with the basic rules.
10. We allow original, properly labeled works, while Wikipedia does not. This promotes a more intellectual atmosphere on Conservapedia. On Wikipedia, observations based on personal experience and interviews have been dismissed as "original research". Here, we do not restrict research for articles in that manner.
It's... infuriating is not a suitable word, really, it's just spreading damnable lies to people. This is a great example in response to the idea of human sexuality at all. This was on the talk page, outside of view of the average visiting netizen:
>add something benign, perhaps along the lines of:
Sexual intercourse is the mechanism by which human beings mate and produce offspring. The Penis enters the Vagina, the male's sperm fertilises the female's egg, and the child forms in the womb. There can hardly be the slightest objection to something as simple as that, a matter-of-fact description for children of how we all came to be.
>I anticipate plenty of objection. For a start, tell a child or young teenager how, and they might want to try it. It also means we have to make articles on mate, penis and virgina, tripling the contriversy. Here's an idea: Disappear the lot. Delete the page, prevent it ever being created again. Do the same for everything that deals with human sexuality
An encyclopedia that just wants to BLACK OUT any mention of sexuality. It's amazing.
Anyway, my main beef is their article on evolution. Perhaps no other article makes its bias more clearly known. It lists every single backwoods forum argument people give against evolution, and talks about public opinion on whether or not evolution is true like that is some solid indicator of its truth. It lists a handful of particular things that sound suspicious that aren't really, or casts aspersions on Darwin and evolutionary scientists or notes particularly unethical scientists and presents them like they prove that evolution is fault. It lists absolutely zero facts that support evolution, despite the hundreds of thousands of them available.
And a while back, they got into an argument with one of the scientists behind the experiments that led to a bacteria evolving a capability to metabolize citrate.. A common conservative POV chestnut about evolution was that evolution has only been observed reducing a genome rather than increasing it -- something that could only be done by an 'intelligent designer' or 'some other unexplained process'. (They're never very vague about who this intelligent designer might be.) Lenski's bacteria did indeed increase their genome and develop a new mechanism: The ability to process citrate.
I would say that find is a nail in the coffin for creationism, but I mean, we're not even at that stage. The mouth has been stuffed with garlic and the head cut off, the body burnt, the head thrown in the coffin and nailed shut, and buried under twenty feet of poured reinforced structural concrete more years ago. Every day, more things come by that confirm the theory of evolution, and nothing that refutes it. Evolution by natural selection is as close of a fact as gravity is or the expansion of gas in a cylinder. Even a comment in that SLOG article, the poster says, 'If it takes decades just to develop a single major change, how long would it possibly take to develop a whole organism?'. Very long indeed: But we have a few billion years to work with. 500 similar complex changes could occur in just 10,000,000 years: A practical hop-skip-and-a-jump by geological time scales.
The people who write this anti-evolution stuff must be well aware that evolution is true. To look at the evidence is to know it's true: There's just no denying it, no pretending it is a gigantic deception. And they make the choice that the deception is better for people than the alternative, and go ahead with it, set out actively to mine evolution for any particular point that would sound good on paper and stick in people's minds: The wedge strategy, to convince the uneducated and force the issue onto the public scene. These people are literally destroying the education of millions. They are like anti-teachers.
And they have the... audacity to sit there on their front page and brag about a journal's comment that:
"The percentage of people in the country who accept the idea of evolution has declined from 45 in 1985 to 40 in 2005. Meanwhile the fraction of Americans unsure about evolution has soared from 7 per cent in 1985 to 21 per cent last year."
I don't know what we are supposed to do in response to people like this. In Guy Harrison's 50 Reasons book, he mentions that people who think evolution isn't true don't need debates, they need education. He says if somebody told it to him in his house, he'd just point to the cro magnon, neanderthal, and other replica skulls he has on his shelf and say, 'Well, then, I wonder who those guys were?'
I agree with him to a point -- the individual people contaminated by the wedge strategy don't need debates, they need education, education they've been told is being waged by biased scientists who want to push their agenda and drown the truth. (What self-respecting scientist could really want to drown the truth on something, to inhibit decades of progress?? Certainly not nearly EVERY intelligent, sane scientist?). Arguments of reason are useless to these people anyway: They have something they just want to believe is true, as much as they want to believe that Obama is going to kill all Christians in the country. It's scary stuff. But the people who are perpetrating this fraud on them, pushing this kind of anti-knowledge on them... It just seems awful, I don't know what to make of it. I am sure they think they are doing the right thing, but I can't imagine how so many could adopt a mindset like that. It makes my skin crawl.