www.conservapedia.com - What do you think?

Is it really that stunning that Republicans are acting more and more like creationists? I can respect someone who at least tries to make an honest case for the Republican platform, but I can find no respect for Republicans who time and again twist the words of others and run away from facts. Sadly, I find it difficult to find honest Republicans to talk to anymore.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Moose notes: Yes. Very bad form - an unforced gaffe. Note also that the "that" is singular and has thus also been argued to demonstrate that he couldn't have been talking about those roads & bridges. Here is what "that" was referring to: Here is the One Word Addition that would have avoided all the bloodsuckers: A gaffe. Ok. Romney at least 34, Obama maybe 2 or 3 in gaffe count so far, for those of you keeping score at home.

Conservapedia seems to have greatly expanded its content in the last five years. It thought it would be interesting to look at their longest articles list. I was surprised to discover that the longest article (excepting the main page news) was about someone I've never heard of - Alger Hiss. Apparently he looms big in the American conservative worldview as he was a big figure in setting up the United Nations and also, according to Conservapedia, a Communist spy. It even links to two further articles on Conservapedia about his legacy.I'm intrigued enough to go and read about him elsewhere now.Looking at other entries on the Long Pages list, it's interesting how much more they write about things they disapprove of than about things they like. The top 20 includes, evolution, atheism, militant atheism, homosexuality and Obama - but not Christianity, Jesus or the United States. Richard Dawkins creeps in there at 24th.

I find the Conservapedia article "Counterexamples to Relativity" to be a source of great entertainment and I find myself drawn to visit the page again and again.Many of the sillier pages on Conservapedia have "Talk" pages on which the silliness is revealed in great detail.

Was it a gaffe? Would people present at the meeting really believe that Obama was telling them that they did not start and build their own business?If a gaffe means making statements that no opponent could possibly twist, then yes it was a gaffe.Meanwhile, Romney's trying to extract his foot from his mouth from comments made about the Olympics in Great Britain.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Corrected first quote attribute from "Moose" to "xongsmith".

NoNukes asks: Mmmm...not in so many words. I would say if the opponents can get any significant traction out of twisting it, then it is a gaffe.Seems like the Romney camp, et al, have twisted the shit out of it already, so yes: Gaffe.Perhaps you meant "no one on your team could possibly twist back into nothing happening"?

I thought THE DAILY SHOW did the best review of it: if he had said "those" instead of "that" it would more clearly show he was referring to the bridges, roads, etc.

I don't understand - example 35 - do they believe aether exists?

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In Genesis 1:6-8, we are told that one of God's first creations was a firmament in the heavens. This likely refers to the creation of the luminiferous aether.

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"They" in this case means Andy Schlafly. His statement is worded loosely enough so that he does not actually have to believe in aether, but merely accept aether theories as likely alternatives to GR. In essence he is saying that he would not be surprised if the aether actually exists. Counterexample 35 is principally Andy expressing his fundamentalist faith. I would read counter example 35 in light of Schlafly's counter example 36.Of course the only aether theories that would have any traction would be the ones which make the same predictions as Special Relativity and General Relativity for those experiments which confirm said predictions. That required traction would make many of the other counter examples rather pointless.I find Andy's page a little amusing because Andy and I have similar education backgrounds. Electrical engineering undergrad plus law degree. My guess is that I probably studied a bit more science than did Andy because I was double majoring in physics , but that's a guess. On the other hand I wasn't birthed and raised by Phyllis Schlafly.

Thanks for taking the time to give me some context here - much appreciated. I find such people fascinating. However tempting it is to dismiss them as stupid, I think it is necessary to recognise that this is comfortable but inaccurate. They are often very ingenious (though admittedly some would say self-deceiving and deceiving of others!) when trying to engage with science. Even if they appear to be engaging only to reject, it is still something other than total isolation from rationality, which is a tiny bit heartening. At least to me.

Yes, Andy Schlafly is probably very bright. I'm not sure of that, because I haven't followed closely. His brother, Roger Schlafly, has done some good stuff on cryptography.I tend to think of Andy Schlafly as a brilliant satirist. His satire is in the form of parody. The trouble is, that Andy doesn't think he is doing parody. He is doing it for real. So it is a kind of accidental self-parody.This seems to be what happens when somebody who is very bright allows himself to be driven by ideology rather than by evidence. So he uses his intelligence to find creative ways of explaining away the inconvenient evidence. Yes, that is very much the problem for Andy (and Roger).

Ha ha! Phyllis Schafly sounds pretty interesting!

I haven't reached a conclusion yet about whether Andy is being deceptive. If you consider the page to be an editorial page rather than a science page, and given the way Andy manages it, I don't see any other alternative, then the page is simply Andy's opinion, and the rebuttals are everyone else's opinon.Many of the examples can be understood as misunderstands of relativity. I can understand why Andy does not change his mind on those. He just does not get it.But on the other hand, some of the rebuttals are so thorough and easy to grasp that it's difficult to understand why anyone would continue to maintain them. The rebuttal of the counter example regarding the advance of the perihelion of Mercury is one such example. Andy used to push an alternative theory of gravity to explain Mercury's orbit, but the table containing the predictions for othe planets seems to have disappeared in the face of demonstrations that its predictions did not work for Venus and Earth. Yet Andy still pushes the alternative. In my view this looks more like deception than self deception.And the action at a distance counterexample is just plain stupid.

The article here is worth a read.

Andy has been exposed to a first class education at the top universities in the country. As I understand it, he has a law degree from Harvard, and an engineering degree from Princeton.And yet this is what runs through his mind:

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Biblical Scientific Foreknowledge predicts that there is no unified theory of light and matter because they were created at different times, in different ways, as described in the Book of Genesis.

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