Intelligent Design Crowd Whines About Wikipedia ‘Censorship’

Intelligent Design proponents are soooooo mad at Wikipedia, calling it a “tyranny of the unemployed.” Because when editors suggest that ID isn’t credible and evolution is a theory on very solid footing, obviously, they’re just haters incapable of properly discussing science:

You simply can never outlast these folks. They have nothing better to do with their time and will always erase your attempted correction and reinstate the bogus claim, with lightning speed over and over again.

Paraphrased: “We try to insert our religious beliefs in their science articles, but they keep fixing it! WHY ARE THEY SO MEAN?!”

Wesley Holland breaks their claims down a little more and I love his summary:

… the ID folks do not like it when the evolution “controversy” is portrayed accurately, with the scientific evidence on one side and the religiously-motivated dogma on the other side. They don’t like it when well-informed Wikipedia contributors illustrate, point-by-point, exactly how much of the alleged “scientific controversy” over evolution relies on articles from non-peer-reviewed and ID-biased journals. In short, they seem to be realizing that accurate information is the enemy of intelligent design.

Beautifully put.

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Mike D

Is ID even a thing anymore? All they do is whine about evolution. I thought ID was supposed to be its own theory n’ stuff. Oops.
SY99

They ought to just lock down whatever they need to from editing so that the edits are verified. Or whatever other mechanisms they use to reduce repetitive edit vandalism.
kenneth

They’re all lab coat and no science!
njbartlett

It is, but I guess it’s not a very active field of research. I mean, once you just shrug and say “God did it” then there’s not much left to say, is there?
Mike D

Once upon a time I looked up the CVs of the Discotute Fellows, and only 9 out of around 50 actually had degrees related to biology. Most of them are lawyers and, shockingly, theologians.
C Peterson

Yeah, and the flat earthers vandalize geography articles. Climate change deniers vandalize global warming articles. UFO nuts vandalize meteor articles. Moon landing hoax kooks vandalize Apollo articles. It’s a problem with just about every branch of science that has an associated pseudoscience or science denier cohort. The experts have to stay on top of those articles all the time, and sometimes the editors have to lock them down temporarily.
Randomfactor

Why waste their time trying to insert ID Creationism. Can’t they just pray that their god poof it into Wikipedia?
B_R_Deadite99

Well, I’m not surprised. Creationists have always been intellectually bankrupt hacks, and will continue to be so until such time as anti-evolutionism goes the way of germ-denial (because nobody, and I mean nobody, with a functioning brain takes those retards seriously. Flat-earthers have the same problem). ID[iocy] has no momentum because it has no logic or proof. That’s why when they try to debunk evolution, they do so on the basis of the fine print on museum displays, or by abandoning reality all together with fantasy stories.

http://acmebuddhistblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/marvin-olasky-is-lying-cretinist.html

http://acmebuddhistblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/piece-of-shit-called-world.html
Mike De Fleuriot

Theologians as valid as a degree in Mother Goose?
Alan Williamson

God created man from dirt, and cloned another with a rib. It makes perfect sense.
northierthanthou

The Dunning-Kruger effect strikes again. …I expect they really don’t know just how wrong they clearly happen to be. So, the edits must seem very unfair.
Solarcide

But, but, but… Ben Stein!
Sonja

And god was so good at it that the “clone” turned out another sex. Sounds legit.
Ronaldmacdonald

No need for the question mark at the end of that sentence.
Mattegg

A lot of them also have degrees in computer science, a valid discipline to be sure, but physics, chemistry or biology it ain’t.
Rebecca Mayfield

My favorite was that when I was a kid, and concerned with incest related problems from the bible, I was told: Oh well they were so genetically pure that they didn’t have that kind of problem from inbreeding.
SF Legend

Gods edits keep getting reverted.
Edward Kirby

This ain’t no Texas classroom.
Rev. Ouabache

This is the reason why Andy Schafly started Conservapedia, btw. He couldn’t stand the fact that other Wikipedians wouldn’t let him insert his pseudo-science and pseudo-history into articles so he took his ball and created his own wiki site that has no connection to reality.
3lemenope

I think the implicit comparison is something like ‘as valid as a degree in Shakespeare’. As in, they are all studying fiction, but the comparative richness of that fiction and its anthropological and psychological value, not to mention aesthetics, differs.
3lemenope

Not to mention that parthenogenesis always turns out a female offspring, so how is Jesus male?
Murbul

God forgot the root password
Dwayne

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis
Specifically the paragraph just above the Contents box: “Parthenogenetic offspring in species that use the XY sex-determination system have two X chromosomes and are female. In species that use the ZW sex-determination system, they have either two Z chromosomes (male) or two W chromosomes (mostly non-viable but rarely a female), or they could have one Z and one W chromosome (female).” Then read up on the ZW sex-determination system.
3lemenope

Which makes sense if Jesus were some species of bird. But since he’s a mammal…
Glasofruix

I hope you’re talking about Shakespeare.
Alycia Keating

Hysterically funny satire on Intelligent Design in the New Yorker a couple years back. A definite keeper!
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/09/26/050926sh_shouts
Buffy2q

Awww, reality doesn’t bow to their beliefs. How unfair.
GrannyGear

There are still Flat Earthers?
B_R_Deadite99

http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/
Conuly

I thought it was with the penis-bone, which is why humans lack one.
Cincinatheist

When I hear this, I become a sad panda. I am a Computer Engineer and devout atheist. When I first heard of the Salem Hypothesis, I was appalled. I had no idea that my Computer Science and Engineering brethren had such a predisposition for applying their skills in logic and analysis to supporting nonsense.

Just know that there are those of us engineers out there like me, who love engineering stuff, but also love science. Like, y’know, real science. I’ve studied enough cosmology and evolutionary biology on my own, that I probably have a bachelors degree equivalent in both. 😉
Cincinatheist

So wait, a group that is operating an ID site at the url ‘evolutionnews.org’ is throwing stones at a group of people that they think are acting dishonestly? Hmmmm…..
Sinfanti

“Tyranny of the unemployed”… so says the tyranny of the uneducated.
Rich Wilson

There are geocentrists too.
Richard Smith

I guess Wikipedia is allergic to BS too!
amycas

Which is funny because I’ve found quite a few Conservapedia articles that were almost entirely lifted from Wikipedia.
NickDB

More evidence for Raptor Jesus 🙂
Ben

Wonderful theory of Evolution? As one scientists said, if Evolution were to be replaced it would have to be a better working model.Well there is a better working model which allows allows both sides of the debate as to our origins to be partly correct. Difficulty with both sides seems to be that they do not want to ‘move house’ they are happy and comfortable where they are ‘living’. We need an evolution of thinking beyond supporting evolution as if it were the best car in a Formula 1 to explain our origins. The way I see it is that scientists over the last 150 years have carefully gathered information in support of the theory and ignored anything which does not fit in with that theory. I believe there is a compromise which allows a bridge of understanding to enable both sides to at least ‘ rearrange the furniture in their respective houses’. I believe that in order for something to be classed as scientific it has to be based on observation.Has anybody seen evolution at the start.The answer is clearly no. Secondly in order to be scientific it must have a prediction – what I ask is the prediction? Thirdly is Evolution falsifiable – on this point evolution is OK.One thing that is evidence by Evolution Hypothesis/Theory is progressive evolution of design and the ASSUMPTION is that it is nature. This is where this new hypothesis/ working model, comes in, Our scientists are able to begin too engineer life.Is it so difficult to imagine what scientists in the next 10 years are capable of, through progressive evolution of design?.I feel that it is much easier today to imagine a scientist designing a genetic code for a particular animal or plant than nature by unimaginable chance. We can see in both genetics and space travel the curve of advance is accelerating. So one asks the question if our scientists can do what they are doing now and in the future,why should there not be much advanced scientists in other parts of the Universe? Further if there are other scientists ‘out there’ why do they not make themselves known? With this new hypothesis we can better understand a lot of issues in the same framework and still respect both the scientific and the religious perspectives, on our origins.
Jeff Xenobuilder

This is a joke right? If not, please go get a clue, and try again later.
Spherical Basterd

A continuous fumble for fundementalist religion; One giant FAIL for you Ben.
Maybe your god, after he’s done teaching his son to ride his new Tyranosaurus Rex, will grant you the miracle of getting the time back you spent writing this drivel.
Edmond

Much to learn about science you have, young one.

Science IS based on observation, you’re correct here, but we don’t have to observe something from its “start” (which, in this case is impossible), we can observe it in its present and make certain deductions from there. We can’t simply assume ANYTHING we want, but SOME things are reasonable.

Evolution only describes the PROCESS of speciation, it tells us how and why there are so many different forms of life on the planet. It does NOT cover how that process began. That’s a different science, called “abiogenesis”. The beginning of life is not a fully understood process, but however it may have happened does not change the fact that evolution takes place, and HAS been taking place for millions of years.

Can we observe it taking place NOW? Yes. Evolution has been observed and measured right in the lab. It’s not guesswork. Knowledge of evolution makes a lot of medical progress possible. If scientists were wrong about evolution, many elements of medicine would not work as they do. We would have no knowledge of things like vaccinations or genetic engineering, and any endeavors in these fields would fail.

Science is also predictive, as you say, and evolution holds up here as well. Darwin forwarded his theories on evolution in the mid to late 1800’s. His theories described the PROCESS of natural selection, but not the mechanism. You see, no one knew about DNA yet. But DNA was PREDICTED by this new science. It was known that, for this process to work, it would need to be an inheritable component, allowing for tiny, random changes between parent and offspring. When DNA was discovered, it proved to be the “vehicle” for evolution, and it confirmed the theory.

When considering the amazing steps humans have taken in such a short time, is it really much of a leap to consider what could happen in FOUR BILLION years? Even with only natural processes? With THAT MUCH TIME, it’s hardly “unimaginable chance”.

All life is a chemical reaction. Chemical reactions power your brain, your heart, your digestion, your reproduction. They power the sun. Even left alone, chemicals will react under the right conditions. It’s not so hard to see the path of logic from early, simply chemical reactions in sunlight and the fiery, electrified soup of the early Earth, through to the most rudimentary amino acids and RNA strands replicating themselves, on up to the more complex forms we recognize today. The point of all these chemical reactions seems to be to consume one another, as lifeforms must consume each other to survive. This struggle to compete for energy, which drives these chemical reactions, is what powers evolution.

We can “suppose” that there might be some mysterious genetic designers “out there” who haven’t made themselves known, but without ANY evidence to help describe or confirm this, it has to remain speculation. The strength of science is in moving PAST speculation, and describing the structure and process of the things we DO have evidence for. There isn’t much point in fantasizing endlessly about cosmic possibilities, if you’re doing it without evidence. We “could” have come from “out there” scientists, we “could” have come from aliens, we “could” have come from the Greek or Norse (or Christian) gods, or we “could” have been vomited up by the Space Frog who lays planets for eggs.

All this speculation does not further any real KNOWLEDGE, which is the goal of science. Speculation without evidence must be discarded, or we’d NEVER reach a real answer. There does not need to be a “bridge of understanding” between science and religion. Science describes the real world, based on what we’ve learned from studying it. Religion is the realm of speculation, assumptions based on stories, with no evidence to support it (and often plenty of evidence to contradict it). Science does not need to make any room for the fantasies of religion, and religion cannot be served by empirical knowledge.
Ohioatheist

Ben, I’m just going to reply to the last part – “still respect both the scientific and the religious perspectives, on our origins.” This isn’t about respect, nor should it ever be. This is about finding the truth, not playing nice so both sides get a piece of the pie. Everyone should want the truth, and be humble enough to concede if evidence proves their side wrong.
Sharon Hypatia

I read Ron Numbers “The Creationists” recently. He talked a bit about how xtian colleges offered degrees in applied sciences, like medicine and engineering. (But not so much in highly theoretical fields like physics ans astronomy.)
One can be a successful doctor or engineer without getting too deeply into the sticky theoretical matters, which works for literalist xtains.
It made me wonder what percentage of engineers are graduates of xtain colleges? It may be one reason why fundies seemed to dominate the field.
Sharon Hypatia

” articles from non-peer-reviewed and ID-biased journals.”
Uhh, are there any ID-biased journals being published? I don’t think the DI has put out a new issue in over 5 years. (I think Dembisk’ s hand got tired from all the writing….)
thilinab

Wait… you mean the ID wiki article has more than 3 words (“God did it”).
thilinab

“They have nothing better to do with their time and will always erase your attempted correction …over and over again “

Doesn’t this also imply that the people complaining also have nothing better to do than edit Wikipedia articles all day.
bismarket

Maybe it’s time for me to take a trip to Conservapedia (lol) & see how THEY like it ☺☮
G P Dimitropoulos

‘Climate change deniers’ are those who don’t “believe” in “the climate changes and it’s all your fault”? Well, could it be that it is the ‘man-made climate change’ believers that lack a proper argument line?