Enemies of Reason: Conservapedia

First in the spotlight as an "Enemy of Reason" is Conservapedia, the conservative response to the "liberal untruths" of Wikipedia . They state that "liberal bias" isn't allowed here, and that it is not only a resource for college-bound homeschoolers, but a resource for those "seeking the truth." Well, what "truth" would that be? While I'm sure some articles are fairly good, there are a number of topics that read like they were written by creationists...likely because they were! Hence the article on evolution, that never actually gets around to talking about the numerous strands of evidence for the theory but instead spends most of its time trying to attack it, through numerous, boundless and irrelevant attacks such as their claim that creationists win the actual debates (with a quote from the late Henry Morris, a creationist debater, voicing his opinion that they always win--hardly compelling evidence), attempting to paint evolution as a liberal, atheist conspiracy as well as repeating the canard that there are no transitional fossils. Perhaps the most offensive, vile and hateful thing I read in the course of the article was a statement about Carl Sagan; "Sagan's agnosticism and avid marijuana smoking no doubt helped inspire Sagan's pseudoscientific fantasy that evolution was a 'fact'."

Just as interesting as their ideas about evolution is their notion that Noah's Flood is an actual event in human history, that dinosaurs were not only on Noah's ark in pairs of two but ate plants before the Fall and were created on Day Six of Creation 6,000 years ago and that the existence of the Great Lakes disproves the idea of an Old Earth. Further, there are spurious attacks on atheists focusing on the fact of their obesity, listing a number of prominent atheists as being obese (I can start pointing out a number of prominent evangelicals who are obese in equal measure, like John Hagee and Jerry Falwell, but what a person's weight has to do with the substance of their beliefs is truly beyond me), as well as an attack on climate change as a cult and a liberal/socialist conspiracy.

A mention of Conservapedia wouldn't be complete without touching on the "Conservative Bible Project," led by founder Andy Schlafly with the intent to re-translate the Bible and eliminate the "liberal" interpretations of previous translators. That will certainly be an interesting read, I have no doubt.

For its defense and promotion of unscientific and pseudoscientific ideas like creationism, for its continuing denial of real science and for a generally distorted view of the world in which we live, Conservapedia is an Enemy of Reason. We have to learn to live in the real world, and it does no one any good to run from and deny the facts. Creating an alternative reality may be emotionally satisfying, but it is complete intellectual denial. Being a conservative shouldn't require checking evidence and reason at the door. On a scale of one to ten, Conservapedia ranks a seven.