Conservapedia claims to be a more accurate encyclopedia, free of “political correctness.”. It forbids the posting of opinions, and requires that all statements be true and verifiable. Despite this promise of objectivity, Conservapedia, in fact, simply views the world through its own fundamentalist Christian lens, and has many examples of clear and shocking bias towards that end. Examples of unverifiable opinion statements in prominent articles, or intellectually dishonest rhetorical devices, follow.
1. The article Theory of evolution has little or no actual scientific treatment of evolution. Instead, it is an article disparaging the theory from a fundamentalist creationist viewpoint. Even the title of the article is demeaning to the project, playing off of the colloquial definition of “theory” to imply a lack of certainty even in the scientific community. This article has been protected to prevent removal of this bias, and has become the exclusive province of Conservative.
2. The article on dinosaurs is slanted to a farcical degree. All scientific statements, such as descriptions of the K-T event and the evolution of dinosaurs, have been lampooned or removed. This article has been protected to prevent removal of this bias, and has become the exclusive province of Conservative.
3. Young earth creationism is no better than the article on the Theory of evolution. This article has been protected to prevent removal of this bias, and has become the exclusive province of Conservative.
4. The article on Homosexuality displays a bigotry and homophobia normally reserved for hate speech groups, emphasizing specious science on the “physical dangers” of homosexuality, insulting gay men and women by calling them “promiscuous,” from an outdated survey, and trivializing homosexuals by suggesting that few, if any homosexuals, actually stay gay for life. This article has been protected to prevent removal of this bias, and has become the exclusive province of Conservative.
5. The article Faith maintains a statement that faith is a characteristic that no other religion shares with Christianity, demonstrating, again, bigotry and a willful blindness towards other cultures. Worse is the reasoning on the talk page defending this statement, in which Aschlafly argues that no other religion’s concept of faith is the same as Christianity’s, thus proving his statement. Obviously, the statement regresses to a tautology: “no other religion but Christianity has a Christian conception of faith.”
6. Many articles demonstrate a misuse of the terms “secular” and “scientific”: an example is the article on the Earth, which terms all scientific data “secular.” This conception of all scientists as atheists mocks the many scientists the world over who have a strong faith in God, and see religion and science as eminently compatible.
7. Many editors attempt to discredit scientific statements by adding an uncited “however” statement after the scientific statement. An example would be – “carbon dating has proven the age of the Earth to be 4.4 billion years. (peer reviewed JSTOR article) However, there is no critical data to back this claim up.[citation needed]” The fact that this is exceptionally poor writing notwithstanding, it is also extremely poor scholarship.
8. Finally, Conservapedia engages in the rhetoric typical of fundamentalist Christian creationists that all science is mere “opinion,” subject to Biblical scrutiny.
9. The administrator of the site, Andrew Schlafly Aschlafly refuses to publicly acknowledge that his site does employ a bias, and refuses to engage in conversation on the topic.
copypasta from
Conservapedia:Bias in Conservapedia (May 2007) - RationalWiki
