Everyone is having their fun with Conservapedia, a rightward-tilting alternative to Wikipedia that aims to ensure that future generations of conservatives grow up really dumb. A mildly-close look reveals that the major biases of Wikipedia that made this new project worth launching are (1) their insistence in using “CE” (Common Era) rather than “AD” (Anno Domini) in giving dates, and (2) the occasional Anglicized spelling. For some great examples of the way self-professed conservatives view the world, see Jon Swift, or a roundup of sciencey responses by Mark Chu-Carroll.
Here are my personal favorites, after five minutes of clicking around. Links to specific versions, as they keep changing, of course. But these look sincere, not the result of vandalism by naughty liberals!
- Atheism
Atheism is the disbelief in the existence of any supernatural deity. This disbelief can take a number of forms, such as the assertion that deities do not exist, or the absence of any belief in any deity.Stalin and Richard Dawkins are prominent atheists. Dawkins wrote a book, called “The God Delusion”. Stalin is now dead, having killed millions of people in the name of Marxis-Leninism (which is predicated on atheism).
Since atheists have no God, as a philosophical framework atheism simply provides no logical basis for any moral standard. They live their lives according to the rule that “anything goes”. In recent years, this has led to a large rise in crime[1], drug use, pre-marital sex, teenage pregnancy,[2] pedophilia[3] and bestiality.
The road from atheism to bestiality is shorter than you think!
- Stalin
Josef Stalin was an atheist communist Russian dictator during World War II. He was defeated by Adolf Hitler, despite Hitler also being an atheist.
That’s the entire entry. I can’t decide which is more amusing — the amazement that one atheist could defeat another in battle, or the judgment that Hitler defeated Stalin.
- Albert Einstein
Einstein’s work had nothing to do with the development of the atomic bomb. Nothing useful has even been built based on the theory of relativity. Only one Nobel Prize (in 1993 and not to Einstein) has ever been given that even remotely relates to the theory of relativity. Many things predicted by the theory of relativity, such as gravitons, have never been found despite much searching for them. Many observed phenomenon, such as the bending of light passing near the sun or the advance of the perihelion in the orbit of Mercury, can be also predicted by Newton’s theory.
Can’t make this stuff up.
- Anything Goes
“Anything Goes” is the title of a 1934 musical production written by Cole Porter. Popular songs from the musical include “You’re the Top,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and “Anything Goes.”Because Porter was a homosexual, we can conclude that ‘anything goes’ was also his philosophy of life. Many atheists have adopted the song as a description of their “moral” code.
Getting the message yet?
- Sex
1. The process by which offspring are conceived.
2. Another term for gender.
Again, that’s the entire entry. But it says so much, don’t you think?
Wait a minute. You mean that Consevapedia is not a satirical parody site, developed to spoof conservatives who complain about Wikipedia???? This domain is for real?? Oh dear me, it turns out that i might have been not laughing my entire ass off to the extent that it so now richly deserves. To consider that this is not parody in the spirit of Mad Magazine, but rather an attempt, in the spirit of reconstructive dominionism, indeed adds so much more to the belly-aching hysterical laughing.
I find this far too scary to laugh much. There are enough of them to keep a big wiki going?
I threw up a little in my mouth while reading that, sad to think that people can be that stupid and believe that shit.
then there is this:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/02/a_new_meaning_to_prayer_in_sch.php
This is a strange story. The principal and several teachers from a school in Florida, apparently concerned that their kids weren’t prepared for a state assessment test, decided to go classroom to classroom saying a prayer for their students to do better. In the process, they “anointed” all of the desks with oil because, apparently, God is more likely to answer a prayer if it’s marinated in oil (presumably extra virgin oil, given His taste for virgins).
The principal, Mary LeDoux, reported it had been a difficult day with high levels of misbehavior, and the state’s standardized assessment test was scheduled to be administered the following week…
“It was staff members on their own time who said, ‘Do you mind if we say some prayers for the kids on the Friday night before FCAT, so the kids would do well?'” LeDoux told the Times.
Forget any church/state issues, there are several other questions that come immediately to mind. First, this whole notion of prayer is patently absurd. The only way the students will do well is if they know the material; either they know it or they don’t. The only way this prayer could be answered is by God artificially “zapping” the correct information into the brains of the students. So let’s think about that for a moment…
Rather than relying on good teaching to make sure their students are prepared for this test, these teachers and administrators choose instead to rely on supplications to supernatural beings to do what they, evidently, believe they themselves have failed to do. In essence, they are advocating divine cheating, asking God to make up for their failures as teachers and give students better marks than they actually deserve based on their own work. This is perverse.
Second, I would love to hear their reaction if a group of teachers decided to go classroom to classroom burning incense and sprinkling chicken blood in the doorway to achieve the same goal. No doubt they would go absolutely ballistic and would consider it defiling the classroom. But what is the difference between believing that supernatural beings respond positively to a few drops of chicken blood and believing that they respond positively to a few drops of olive oil, or to the smell of burning goat flesh? No doubt these good Christian folks would consider anyone who thought the test scores could be increased with chicken blood and incense to have a screw loose; somehow they think their silly superstitions don’t mean the same thing.
Fer crissakes, its a parody site you dumb jackasses.
Nice try, but — it’s all too sincere, I’m afraid.
My favorite part is the “commandments” regarding posting. One commandment is that you must always tell the truth. Hmmmm……
Elliot
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http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism
it got a serious over haul
Atheism
From Conservapedia
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Atheism, in common usage, means “lack of belief in any Gods”. As Atheism is part of a scientific worldview which is based upon observable evidence rather than dogmatic insistence upon the veracity of superstitious claims which are unsupported by evidence, it also discounts supernatural phenomena such as the afterlife, divine revelation, ghosts, psychics, fairies, and other such ideas.
Atheism is popularly divided into Strong and Weak Atheism: Strong Atheism can be defined as a dogma in itself: The assertion that there absolutely is no God, despite the fact that the existence of the supernatural cannot be disproven. Weak Atheists acknowledge that nothing can be disproven, and while this does not suggest that there *is* a god (no more than the fact that we cannot disprove leprechauns suggests that they exist) it would nonetheless be unscientific to declare a God or godlike being impossible. Because of this distinction, many confuse Weak Atheism with Agnosticism, even persons who believe themselves to be Agnostics.
Atheism is closely tied with Secular Humanism. Popularly known Atheists include Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Stephen J. Gould, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.
[edit]
Atheist morality
Atheist morality is based upon emotion, experience and empirically derived ethics, such as those promoted by secular humanism. Atheists hold that the Bible cannot be our source of morality as it contains countless calls for immoral behavior such as killing any who try to convert you, stoning homosexuals and adulterers to death, and the institution of slavery. Instead, most Christians actually rely on their own innate philanthropic sense (which has evolved as a necessary element of communal living over millions of years) to cherry pick the pleasant parts of the Bible and ignore the rest.
Atheists often subscribe to the secular humanist idea that it is far more ethical to do what is right simply because you feel that it’s right, rather than because you fear divine punishment. Such ethical behavior facilitates civilized living and improves the quality of life for everyone.
The common argument that Naziism and Stalinism were atheistic in nature and that their violence stemmed from that nature ignores more recent examples of what they actually were; Personality cults. Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and more recently despots like Kim Jong Il were or are at the center of governments which enforce reverence unto them as though they were deities.
As for allegations that atheism contributes to crime, here are studies showing that in fact the opposite is true: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece
Finally, evidence of the inverse correlation between religiosity and intelligence: http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/religiosity-and-intelligence/
After following a few google trails in the blogsphere, Conservapedia seems to be the effort of Roger and Andy Schlafly. See here for their writings on talk.origins.
Thanks – this has provided a wealth of astonishing amusements.
Click on the “history” tabs (e.g. http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Equal_Rights_Amendment&action=history ), and you might notice much of the content throughout the site is credited to “Aschlafly”, who indeed takes credit as and apparently actually is Andy Schlafly. I’m sure this has no bearing on a few odd coincidences such as the far greater attention paid to the entry on “Equal Rights Amendment” than say, France (which has 21 words right now) or Beethoven, and includes this gem of vital knowledge:
“35 out of 38 states passed this amendment, but opposition led by Phyllis Schlafly then defeated it.”
Wow! Schlafly must be a really common name or something. What a coincidence.
This site’s locus of excellence, though, is the entry for “Dinosaur”. Each version in the history is a gem of unique merits, but for the flavor, here is just the current version:
“From the Latin for “terrible lizard”, dinosaurs were a group of large lizards that previously lived in abundance on Earth.
“Evolutionists claim that dinosaurs roamed the planet from 230 million until 65 million years ago and that they are all currently extinct.
“Dinosaurs are not explicitly mentioned in the Bible, although the behemoth in Job[1] and the leviathan in Isaiah are considered by creation scientists to represent the brachiosaurus and kronosaurus respectively. [2]”
Anyone see the page on evolution?
http://www.conservapedia.com/Evolution
Funny how these people only express interest in science when it seems to refute another, relatively more controversial scientific maxim. Case in point- the claim in the article above that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. Obviously these people don’t know how to define a closed system…absolutely hilarious.
Btw, has anyone wondered why exactly mainstream Western religion posits that the universe is ~10,000 years old? My thought is that for every order of magnitude you add to the age of the universe, the difficulty of weaving together a self-consistent, continuous account for all of history becomes exponentially more tedious and insurmountable.
Kudos to all of science for weaving together such a story that extends another six orders of magnitude out.
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@Paul Schmit:
The young-Earthers believe that the Earth was created in the year 6006 BC (around October 14, iirc), because a fourth-century monk decided to add up all the “begats” in the Bible, took the ages of these as literal years, and worked backwards to that date. Really.
M.
One of my favorites is the entry for Japan, which in its entirety is:
“Group of islands of the western coast of Asia.”
So simple. So wrong. So entertaining.
The first thing I did on Conservapedia was put in one country name after another, in order to learn how the authors viewed the world. Japan was not the only country that was “So simple. So wrong. So entertaining.”
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@ Mike,
Yes, many Christian and Jewish sects interpret the depiction of events in the Old Testament as a chronological history, using several different markers and key words to set up constraints on the maximum amount of time that might have passed during and between events. The Young Earthers are certainly a large constituent of this group of people, but they are not alone, and are joined by many more groups of Christians and Jewish followers. What’s interesting is that many ancient natural philosophers (Aristotle, Democritus, Lucretius, etc etc) and many Eastern religions (Buddhism and Hindu to name a couple large ones) have all placed the age of the Earth, and in many cases the entire universe, at anything from tens of millions of years to an eternity. Of course, these estimates in most cases likely didn’t have a definite chronological account for all of history attached to them and were likely more instinctual guesses, so that is where the Old Testament becomes somewhat unique.
My thought was primarily that it is an awfully interesting coincidence that the age of the world postulated by those willing to believe in the linearity of the events depicted in the Bible happens to extend a minimum number of orders of magnitude (namely, 1) beyond the ages of the oldest cultures with (relatively) well-documented historical footprints. Just old enough to capture the faith of people with no more than a cursory knowledge of ancient history and a skepticism or lack of knowledge regarding modern scientific beliefs. And what’s better, the whole account fits in a single book (rather than requiring a veritable Testament Britannica)…great marketing, I must say.
No articles on “Schafly” or “homosexual”…. Seems somewhat incomplete for a conservative compendium. 😉
Elliot
“The existence of unicorns is controversial. Secular opinion is that they are mythical. However, they are referred to in the Bible nine times, which provides an unimpeachable de facto argument for their once having been in existence.
…
Post-Noachian references to unicorns have led some researchers to argue that unicorns are still alive today. At the very least, it is likely that they were taken aboard the Ark prior to the Great Flood.”
And little girls everywhere are heard squealing in delight.
for you history buffs …
“In November 1980, the first modern conservative was elected president of the United States: Ronald Reagan. For the next 25 years the influence of him and those who supported him is still being felt. President Reagan cut taxes and defeated communism. He also had the most original and influential idea of any president in American history: the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), known by its critics as “Star Wars.”
LOL
Spanish-American War
“The war between America and Spain for control of Cuba, the Phillipines and other Spainish colonies, which America, being a Christian nation, won, while Spain, being a Catholic country, lost.”
Not to defend conservapedia, but it should probably be pointed out that many of those articles were actually written by children. The article on Japan, for instance, was written by a seventh-grader who, judging from her user’s page, is obviously more interested in cute little rabbits and kitties than the geography of eastern asia. To quote from “About Conservapedia”: “Conservapedia began in November 2006, as the class project for a World History class of 58 advanced homeschooled and college-bound students meeting in New Jersey.” Criticism and derision should be aimed at those who run conservapedia, not at those students and their little articles.
I followed one commenter’s suggestion on countries to find what thorough, detailed (if openly biased) information it would provide on a country I lived in for quite some time: Brazil. I reproduce here – in it’s entirety – the amazingly insightful article being used to educate good Christians here in the U.S. on a neighbor to the south:
BRAZIL – A lie propagated by godless hedonistic liberals.
Wow. That tells me so much. Those Conservapedia trained kids are going to be geniuses. Definitely will be much more qualified for the State Department than the bozos we have there now.