Daniel Mayer wrote:
When there is no real controversy on a topic (in a
global sense)
then facts can be presented as facts.
That's right. And a lot of science at the level of details does fall
into the category. For example, reasonable creationists don't claim
that scientists are just *lying* about finding fossils, about genetic
variation, and so on. All the basic evidence is uncontroversial, at
least generally speaking, although of course there are challenges to
specific details here and there.
But we don't have room in every article to present
every idea on a
subject - we have to pick and choose. If done right then the major
arguments are presented in some detail, with more detailed text on
daughter articles and the minor/crackpot ones get maybe a sentence
or two or just a "see also" link.
Yes, that's right. If someone asks "But why didn't you have 3
chapters on reconciling Genesis with the geological evidence?" the
answer is "Because this book isn't about that."
<Devil's advocate>Ever hear of a "bias
of selection?"</Devil's advocate>
Well, that's a very good question, but I *think* I have a very good
answer.
The bias of selection consists in selectively omitting arguments or
evidence in order to give a misleading picture. Not all selectivity
is bias, sometimes it's just restricting the domain to a manageable
subset of all that is known.
Good thing you put the qualifier "honest" in
there. Otherwise I
would have listed a few states where creationism is either presented
as a valid competing theory to evolution or as superior to evolution
in those state's public school biology textbooks. It makes me sick
to think about that (also very glad that I didn't grow up in those
backward states -- no offense intended Jimbo :-).
Well, I always attended private schools, even though my parents were
not and are not rich. So, you know, I'm very sympathetic to what you
are saying.
But I haven't actually read any of those textbooks, so I wonder how
they really handle it.
Also, I would prefer us to use the terminology of
"module" instead
of article when talking about textbook pages (both are one wiki page
but "article" isn't a good word for our use here - neither is
"page"
realy).
That sounds sensible to me. What about the word 'chapter'? But
anyhow, I think that 'module' or 'chapter' certainly makes more sense.
One thing about textbooks is that they need to be self-contained and
*ordered* in a way that an encyclopedia is not. This depends, in
part, on the subject matter, but take math as an example -- the
concepts of trigonometry need to be presented more or less in a
particular order, or the student will be lost.
--Jimbo