Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Hideous Misrepresentations, Outright Lies, and Demagoguing of ID at wikipedia

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For those who trust wikipedia as a neutral and objective source of information, check out this.

I use wikipedia for looking up mathematical formulae, and technical information concerning aeronautical, mechanical, electrical, and software engineering — all relevant to my work. In such realms it is a great resource.

But as a resource concerning ID, it is the equivalent of TV faith-healing con-artistry.

Comments
Elizabeth Liddle: So you have managed to correct some spellings and a graph on Wikipedia? That's nice. Now try changing any ID-related articles. Try to change any false statements, deliberately slanted misrepresentations, incorrect definitions, guilt-by-association devices, innuendo, subtly ad hominem attacks on ID theorists, etc. Whether you make the changes directly, or after raising them on the discussion pages, won't make a bit of difference. If you make the changes without consultation, your changes will be reversed inside of about 20 minutes, with a snarky comment added about your prejudiced point of view; if you politely raise the question of possible change first, you will be met with a barrage of comments defending the text as it stands, and if you point out that the other editors don't seem to be listening with an open mind to your criticism of the article, the comments will start to get rough, and you will be accused of being a creationist with a religious axe to grind. This is what has been reported by every single ID proponent known to me who has ever tried to correct factual errors or malicious material in the ID articles. I think you simply lack the relevant experience in this area. Changes to Wikipedia on certain subject matters are not only not "easy"; they are in practice impossible. You should withdraw your casual comment, which, though you didn't intend it as such, was in fact insensitive to those who have spent hundreds of hours of their lives trying to replace lies with truth, and failed.Timaeus
June 29, 2011
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#13 Graham, ID is part of God's general revelation. Consequently, it can be understood apart from the Bible. That's why, for instance, the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies invited me to lecture on intelligent design and warmly embraced my message (this happened in October 2003). Just about anyone who is not wedded to a pure materialism agrees that some sort of design or purpose underlies nature. Intelligent design not only gives a voice to these people, but also gives them the tools to dismantle materialism. http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.02.Reply_to_Henry_Morris.htmrhampton7
June 28, 2011
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A couple of years ago I happened upon the Wikipedia page for David Berlinski. The profile was a cheap-jack hit job on the man, and the only quote was a few out of context sentences from his famous "The Deniable Darwin" Commentary article from many years ago. The quote was a humorous God reference that Berlinski made that in isolation was used to make him out as a Fundamentalist of some sort. In my naiveté, I set out to correct the Wikipedia article. I made some slight additions to his bio and included a more representative quote from that seminal article he wrote. I wrote reasons for my changes on the discussion tab. I was immediately tag-teamed time and again by a squad of anti-ID pro wrestlers who erased any change I made within minutes ... literally, within minutes. Since I did not have a tag team on my side of the ring, they got me banned as an individual making too many changes in a three day period. I have a life, so I gave up. It’s really impossible for me to understand that there are teams of trolls who squat before their screens with alarms to alert them of Wikipedia entries that don’t fit their narratives.StuartHarris
June 27, 2011
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We could take bets. Change the Wiki article and see how long it takes for them to revert it back...NZer
June 27, 2011
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Dembski also stated, "ID is part of God's general revelation..." Did he really say that ? What does it mean ?Graham
June 27, 2011
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F/N: It is worse than that: there are moderators in a hierarchy. If you try hard enough to correct the WILLFUL misrepresentations of design theory and design thinkers [they have been corrected many, many times and have even been threatened with lawsuits in other cases -- look in UD's archives], you will be banned and the moderators will if necessary lock in the slanders and misrepresentations. Wikipedia is viciously and willfully deceptive propaganda on these subjects, period. And Wiki's article on Neo-creationism shows that this too is a smear.kairosfocus
June 27, 2011
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Wikipedia openly admits that it is not a credoble source: Wikipedia is not a credible source The fact that anyone can edit it is one of the reasons for that.Joseph
June 27, 2011
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I often wonder why Darwinists use top-down, intentional methodology to post on Wikipedia, Amazon, or anywhere (here, for example). You'd think they'd just use a random letter generator coupled with a natural selection algorithm, beginning with the subject phrase "intelligent design" (or the title of whatever book they are noviewing), wait until their computer generates a coherent string of words and then send that in. We'd probably get a better quality of posts than what we're used to.Meleagar
June 27, 2011
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A couple of yours ago, someone spent considerable hours patiently researching correct information for Bill Dembski of our blog, only to discover that all his fact-based changes were simply erased by a Darwin troll. The strength of the Darwin lobby's interest in misrepresenting ID theorists made that inevitable, of course. Some wonder whether the matter will eventually be resolved by a rash of threatened lawsuits, in the wake of actual damage done - as happened for example in the Martin Gaskell case and the Granville Sewell case. Which could easily happen if prospective employers took Wikipedia seriously. Wikipedia then faces a choice: Clean up or pay up.News
June 27, 2011
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In that case you complain, and sometimes get a note on the page to the effect that "the neutrality of this page is disputed". That's why it's better to discuss the changes rather than just make them. I've changed the odd thing without discussion (spelling errors, for instance) but usually I say something on the discussion pages first. On one occasion,the error in question was a graph, which had been circulating on the internet without any clue as to its provenance, and also turned up on wiki. At one point I found it had been attributed to me! So I deleted it. It never came back.Elizabeth Liddle
June 27, 2011
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Hi Lizzie, I'm guessing you've never seen what happens when you edit the page. It's back to this sort of thing in a day or so. Maybe less. Anybody can edit it after all. - SonfaroSonfaro
June 27, 2011
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Have you never tried, ba77? It's very easy. I've done it a few times.Elizabeth Liddle
June 27, 2011
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'Well, the beauty of wikipedia is that you can challenge it or change it.' HA HA HAbornagain77
June 27, 2011
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Well, the beauty of wikipedia is that you can challenge it or change it.Elizabeth Liddle
June 27, 2011
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This is the only place I've seen that term "neo-Creationism." I wonder if they made that up. If so, it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia article. If I'm wrong, it's probably a word that was used in the writings of ID detractors. If so, that doesn't make it authoritative. I bet they're not misrepresenting Nietzsche.CannuckianYankee
June 27, 2011
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From the Wikipedia link cited above:
Intelligent design is the proposition that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” It is neo-creationism, a form of creationism restated in non-religious terms. It is also a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, but one that deliberately avoids specifying the nature or identity of the intelligent designer. Its leading proponents—all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank—believe the designer to be the Christian God.
Does this include the agnostic David Berlinski? And Moonie Jonathan Wells? Are there others?NZer
June 27, 2011
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"Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Gil, this opening has actually improved from a couple of years ago when it started with: "Intelligent design is the assertion that......" Remember that? As time goes by there will be less and less that they can get away with.CannuckianYankee
June 26, 2011
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