March 01, 2007
And forgive us our vandalism, as we forgive those who vandalize our wiki pages
Did you know that the concept of faith is unique to Christianity? It must be true, I read it in Conservapedia!
There's lots of interest here. For those of you who think that fundamentalist Christians are anti-science, I suggest you check out the page on Baraminology. And it's clear to see how much one gains by discarding the anti-Christian Wikipedian point of view (I mean, they use C.E. instead of A.D., for heaven's sake! How anti-Christian can you get?) when you compare their heathen perspective on Pilgrim's Progress to the respectful Conservapedia version.
(Thanks to Bill for the link.)
Posted by Francis at 06:20 PMMust...restrain...urge...to...vandalize....
Posted by: Rubrick at March 1, 2007 07:15 PMLanguageLog also pointed out some of the factual inaccuracies. (Big fan of the word order of Egyptian being "Subject, Noun, Object".)
I certainly saw the CE thing; I missed the article on faith, because I was too busy clicking "random page", finding all kinds of scientific terms cited to "Exploring Creation With Biology". (Also a fun entry: "Catholics", whose entire text reads "The members of the Catholic church.")
Also, don't miss the Debate Topics. (With such questions as "Crusades... Good or Bad?" and "Is it even possible to install democracy in a Muslim country?")
The thing is, of course, that this isn't really even an encyclopedia; it's "the class project for a World History class of 58 advanced homeschooled and college-bound students meeting in New Jersey", which explains (a) why most of the objection to Wikipedia is not its "liberal" bias, but its secular bias, and (b) why it's so sparse. It's a shame it's not going to be graded by anyone other than the kids' parents, because I'd love to give them an objective grade on the project and explain why.
Thus, also, the series of "World History Lectures" on the site; the first one includes such wonderful questions like
"World history is also fascinating because there are many mysteries and controversies about it. How did the Egyptians build the pyramids? In what language did Jesus preach? Why did Islam grow so rapidly? Who was right, the Catholics or the Protestants? Is modern Israel a fulfillment of biblical prophecy? Is democracy compatible with Islam?"
"Many other cultures, from Mesopotamia to Greece to Rome to India to China, invented things and discovered knowledge that no one today is smart enough to duplicate. Do you know how to bake bread from scratch?"
It's kind of hard to keep reading. It helps to know that Andy Schlafly is a known Internet loony, I suppose.
Posted by: Lance at March 2, 2007 08:33 PM