Conservapedia

Collecting more URLs on the application / sense checking of technologies. I’ve been getting a steady stream of questionnaires sent back. Many people are filling in the answers with one liners, several are giving fuller, more considered answers. I am finding it interesting that the people that seem to know what truth is, in one line don’t have much to say about the subject. Whether it is because the questionnaire takes too long to fill in, or they just don’t think to much about the concept of truth, I’ll never know.

I saw on Jon Stewart’s “daily show” (more 4) that “www.conservapedia.com” (“An encyclopaedia with articles written from a conservative viewpoint.”) has been created to combat “the liberal propaganda that is wikipedia”… I check it out, and find that it is nearly identical (in look and feel) to Wikipedia (I later find out on a discussion board that this is because the software used to create “wiki’s” (Wiki is the Hawaiian word for “fast”) – so it appears that “wikipedia” has turned into the genericised trademark for user driven information collation and editing (when it is in fact, just one of many “wiki’s”). I was interested to see that the bloggers were disgusted by the apparent “pastiche” (or cloning) of wikipedia – as if conservapedia were trying to covertly steal or assimilate the market on “truthful information” – an insult to any “liberal minded web-goer”. It’s fascinating to see how passionate people can get over the apparent injustice of using information for political / religious gains, in the context of “a truly democratic medium” – the internet.

I tested conservapedia, the schoolboy test – “cunt”: “This page has been deleted and protected to prevent re-creation” (whereas wikipedia has a word count of 6,701 giving information about the word.
“Jesus Christ” has 2,016 words in Conservapedia, and Wikipedia has 14,090 words. Word count alone, does not make a collection of information any more valid, it indeed could contain 90% non-factual information!, but, the interesting aspect of the content, is that Wikipedia presents all aspects of information, from Christian accounts of Jesus as well as Islamic, Jewish, Hindu etc (although I did not see any Satanists points of view!) Historical information, “questions of reliability” all give the user (reader) a far greater breadth of information for them to then base their own opinions on, whereas Conservapedia only state Christian points of view, no consideration of any external religions – alternative ideas about the existence of Jesus Christ.

It is widespread throughout Conservapedia – the lack of broad, all encompassing information. “Conservatism” as an ideology is to be limited, to refuse to change from the status quo (“to conserve” is to keep, to retain and preserve). I can understand why it exists, people fear change, they fear the unknown – and with questioning “known givens” we open ourselves to unknowns. If progress is how humans evolve, we need change (it is the essence of evolution) – it is ironic that even fundamental conservatives (in most Christian circles) that evolution is nonsense – that the possibility of “nothing” evolving into “humans” is absurd. This is where my questioning, inquisitive mind would ask, “so where did your god come from?” – to which the answer is always “god has always existed”….we then delve into a world of human-centric argument based on assumptions and feelings, not of hard evidence and “fact”…which Is where I will stop this rant, merely to summarise that:

Information is at our fingertips, myriads of perspectives, points of view, fact and fiction, argument and evidence. We are presented this information in many forms, TV, radio, books, papers and most recently, the Internet. With all this conflicting information – it is evident that there are no truths (if there are, they are lost under a weight of opinion) – even if a scientific fact is undeniable – unquestionable, people can still disbelieve it due to indoctrinated scepticism, Religious Vs Scientific, Logical Vs Emotional. Like life, there will always have to be opposites, opposites create conflict, conflict is energy, and when there is no energy, entropy and nothingness take hold.