Month: September 2009

“Left-wing, chicken-wing, it’s all the same to me”…..Woody Guthrie.

Why would anyone have contempt for an educated person? I’ll tell you why, it’s because new information and discoveries have always challenged the beliefs of the past. The evolution of perspective inevitably changes the way we see reality and the world we live in. There are many who take up the mantle of conservatism to protect and insulate themselves and their beliefs from the perceived attack on their reality of the truth. The more extreme fundamentalist conservatives create and promote their own limited views by enshrining them in “legitimate” vehicles such as museums and encyclopedias. So today, for the purpose of shining the light of truth into the darkness of ignorance, I offer but two examples of how this practice can be harmful and dangerous and, dare I say it, specious, subterfuge, deception, dishonesty, etc.

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The website “Conservapedia” is a “copy-cat” online encyclopedia that mimics Wikipedia in order to gain “legitimacy” on the internet.

“The Conservapedia project has come under significant criticism for factual inaccuracies and factual relativism. Conservapedia has been compared to CreationWiki, a wiki written from the perspective of creationism, and Theopedia, a wiki covering the Bible. Some writers have compared it with new conservative websites competing with mainstream ones, such as MyChurch, a Christian version of social networking site MySpace, and GodTube, a Christian version of video site YouTube. The Guardian of the United Kingdom has referred to the Conservapedia’s politics as “right-wing”.

Thomas Eugene Flanagan, a conservative professor of political science at the University of Calgary, has argued that Conservapedia is more about religion, specifically Christianity, than conservatism and that it “is far more guilty of the crime they’re attributing to Wikipedia” than Wikipedia itself. Matt Millham of the military-oriented newspaper Stars and Stripes called Conservapedia “a Web site that caters mostly to evangelical Christians”. Its scope as an encyclopedia, according to its founders, “offers a historical record from a Christian and conservative perspective.” APC magazine perceives this to be representative of Conservapedia’s own problem with bias.

The project has also been criticized for promoting a dichotomy between conservatism and liberalism and for promoting relativism with the implicit idea that there “often are two equally valid interpretations of the facts”. Matthew Sheffield, columnist for The Washington Times and contributor to the conservative Media Research Center blog NewsBusters, argued that conservatives concerned about bias should contribute more often to Wikipedia rather than use Conservapedia as an alternative since he felt that alternative websites like Conservapedia are often “incomplete”. Author Damien Thompson says Conservapedia “is to dress up nonsense as science”.

Allegations of homophobia have also been raised against Conservapedia. Bryan Ochalla, writing for the LGBT (“lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender”) magazine The Advocate, referred to the project as “Wikipedia for the bigoted.” (read more)

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The “Creation Museum” is a laughable use of the word museum and another example of mimicry to gain a sense of legitimacy. Mimicry can be another form of deception.

“The Creation Museum is a “museum” that presents an account of the origins of the universe, life, mankind, and man’s early history according to a literal reading of the Book of Genesis. Its exhibits reject universal common descent, along with most other central tenets of evolution, and assert that the Earth and all of its life forms were created 6000 years ago over a six-day period. In particular, exhibits promote the claim that humans and dinosaurs once coexisted, and dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark. The museum exhibits are at odds with the vast majority of scientists who accept that the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, and that the dinosaurs became extinct 65.5 million years before human beings arose. The museum has generated criticism by the scientific community, several groups of educators, Christian groups opposed to young Earth creationism, and in the general press.

Professor Lord Robert Winston visited the museum and remarked, “I admit I was dismayed by what I saw at the Ken Ham museum. It was alarming to see so much time, money and effort being spent on making a mockery of hard won scientific knowledge. And the fact that it was being done with such obvious sincerity, somehow made it all the worse.”

Educators criticizing the museum include the National Center for Science Education. The NCSE collected over 800 signatures from scientists in the three states closest to the museum (Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio) on the following statement: “We, the undersigned scientists at universities and colleges in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, are concerned about scientifically inaccurate materials at the Answers in Genesis museum. Students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level. These students will need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis.”

NCSE director Eugenie Scott characterized the Creation Museum as “the Creationist Disneyland.” The Guardian called the facility “quite possibly…one of the weirdest museums in the world.” Physicist Lawrence Krauss has called on media, educators, and government officials to shun the museum and says that its view is based on falsehoods. Krauss said that the facility is “as much a disservice to religion as it is to science.”

The museum has also been criticized by Christians who are not young Earth creationists. Notable among them is geologist Greg Neyman of Answers in Creation, an old earth creationism ministry. Neyman released a press kit dealing with the museum’s grand opening in which he said: “They will see the museum, and recognize its faulty science, and will be turned away from the church.

The Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Cincinnati, Ohio, said it calls into question the whole Christian concept and “makes us a laughing stock.” Roman Catholic theologian John Haught sees little merit in the museum, saying it will cause an “impoverishment” of religion. Michael Patrick Leahy, editor of the magazine Christian Faith and Reason, says that by replacing the scientific method with biblical literalism, the museum undermines the credibility of all Christians and makes it easy to represent Christians as irrational.

Lisa Park, a professor of paleontology at University of Akron who is also an Elder in the Presbyterian Church was particularly disturbed by the museums depiction that war, famine and natural disasters are the result of a belief in evolution. She stated: “I think it’s very bad science and even worse theology…and the theology is far more offensive to me. I think there’s a lot of focus on fear, and I don’t think that’s a very Christian message…I find it a malicious manipulation of the public.”

The museum has also been accused of using 19th century human evolution theories, since refuted, to promote the idea that different human races came from Noah’s descendants dispersing after the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel. In August 2009, more than 300 people part of the Secular Student Alliance took a tour of the venue, along with P.Z. Myers, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Scientists in the group, such as chemist William Watkin, commented about how scientifically wrong the displays are. Myers posted an account of the tour on his blog, including condemning the venue for “promoting the Hamite theory of racial origins, that ugly idea that all races stemmed from the children of Noah, and that black people in particular were the cursed offspring of Ham.”

In a March 2007 Newsweek poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, 48% of respondents agreed with the statement “God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.” According to an ABC news poll, 60% of Americans believe that “God created the world in six days.” (read more)

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A warning to those who would attempt to subvert the truth, it will bite you in the end. Perspective cannot be used to change or distort the truth, the truth is, with or without your perspective. There has always existed an age old battle between old and new, liberal and conservative, there is nothing inherently evil about either but both can be usurped. The neo-conservative is a wolf in sheeps clothing, an injured wolf, just like the ultra-liberal, both are extremists dealing in absolutes, both are undesirable. I understand how new and conflicting truths can threaten to destroy an entire life of belief, don’t be afraid of the truth. And what of the holdouts? We will have to drag them, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness”…..John Kenneth Galbraith.