Fiction Marauding as Fact

Everyone lies. Lying is a simple fact of being human, some people lie to protect others' feelings, some people lie to protect themselves and others just like to lie. Everyone is also guilty of being ignorant, to varying degrees. Some are ignorant when it comes to politics or science or any other area of life. The fact is we all think we know things when we actually don't.

This post is about a website that combines lies and ignorance into one stupid mess, the website is called Conservapedia. Conservapedia was founded by a Tea Party activist, Andrew Schlafly in 2006 as he believed that Wikipedia was biased towards Liberals. Just like Wikipedia anyone can edit, the only difference is you have to register to edit Conservapedia. The website is rife with inaccuracies and opinion presente as fact. It is incredibly biased, for much of the past four years Barack Obama's birthplace has been listed as "Honolulu, Hawaii or Kenya", even after Obama released his birth certificate. The first line of the article of global warming reads "Global warming is the liberal hoax...", no debate, just a lie. The fact of the matter is global warming is accepted by 99.9% of climate scientists, the debate over its truth is in politics, not science. According to Conservapedia, evolution is another lie and homosexuality is a choice, oh and gays molest children. Stupid, right? But the most bizarre page I have found so far is the one on the London Olympics. Rather than focussing on what actually happened at the Olympics such as medal tables, the preparations or the athletes; editors chose to focus on atheism. Seriously. Atheism. One of my favourite lines in the 'article' is this: "Underachievement by atheistic nations will be particularly evident in team sports, where spiritual motivation is virtually non-existent." Throughout the whole piece I was laughing at the sheer stupidity of what I was reading, I don't think I've read anything more unintelligent in my entire life.

On a more serious note, it's ok for me to laugh. The people who edit this website are mostly American, Tea Party, Republicans, they have zero influence over politics in my country. It is more worrying for Americans, these editors really believe what they are writing, all facts on the contrary. And these people have power in the US, they control governorships, state legislatures, federal House and Senate seats. They even have their eyes on the Presidency. The fact of the matter is something needs to be done about fiction marauding as fact. Conservapedia is far from the only website spewing this hatred and lies, there are thousands of blogs, talk radio shows and the king, Fox News. Although Fox is not as extreme as Conservapedia, it still contributes to the conservative bubble in America. Never have I seen a better argument for investing in education.