Delirium (delirium(a)hackish.org) [050701 07:55]: Saying Intellient Design is pseudoscience wouldn't be, though, as imitating science is its precise purpose. So how would you categorise creationism? Mythology, like [[Xenu]]? - d.

Ah, but "beliefs" is a touchy word. If you put "Origin beliefs" on the article about the Big Bang, I'm betting some people would get irritated -- "Science isn't about mere belief." Of course, in a sense they're right -- if you take "belief" to just mean something held on unsubstantiated faith, then scientific facts are generally held to be a bit more than that. But of course the Creationists don't consider their beliefs to be of that nature either -- they're more than happy to give you what they considered to be reasonable substantiation! In the end it comes down to disagreements about methodology, interpretation, etc. So what words to use? "Origin considerations"? Now we're getting into the absurd and the meaningless. The need to have some meaning indicates we will have to perhaps sometimes have some statements which are less neutral than others. But I agree with the notion that Wikipedia will always reflect a certain POV. It is impossible to do anything truly "objectively" -- what would it mean to be an observerless observer? But I think the issues here are a bit more complicated than this. The Apollo moon landing article is mostly about what is most widely considered by *relevant authorities* to be true -- it doesn't matter if 60% of the world population doesn't believe it happened that way if 99% of scientists do, in my opinion, as this sort of knowledge is firmly within the domain of scientists to provide the best answers on. So they get the "unmarked" POV. Of course, enough people believe that the landing was a hoax to make that a notable interpretation. There have been books, magazine articles, television programs, etc. about the question -- it is a relevant POV which must be addressed. And so at the end of the article it says, "See this other article for the hoax theory." (Not all alternative interpretations are notable enough to discuss at length, of course. Some require only a small paragraph and a link to provide enough relevant coverage, in my opinion). I think writing "Homeopathy is a pseudoscience" is too strongly worded -- the question of whether certain aspects of homeopathy (not the diluting part, but the other "like helps like" part) is unclear. I've heard certain parts of homeopathy discussed by biologists and physicians in a positive light during a class at a major American state university. It is best to say, "Many aspects of homeopathy are considered to be pseudoscientific by the mainstream medical community" or something along those lines. Attribute the POV, "mark" it a bit, but honestly it is not a deep "mark". FF On 6/30/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:

This of course is not to say that american society may not eventually change to a point of view where creationism is the main theory of life and the theory of natural selection is more of a minority opinion. -Jtkiefer

On 7/2/05, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: Most? I would say that the creationists are a significant minority; I don't believe that they're a majority, at least not yet. Kelly

On Jul 2, 2005, at 10:43 AM, Nathan J. Yoder wrote: Don't worry - your attempt at bitchy rules lawyering makes me want to go read your contributions recently for the barest hint of a personal attack so I can ban you. (see Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point). -Snowspinner

Lesson of the day, calling an admin's (but probably not a regular user's) behavior disingenuous is a 'personal attack.' Here's the direct quote which snowspinner deliberately looked for and blocked me for out of spite: "In any case, I just love how the admins here are trying their absolute best to disengenuously change the process in order to ensure their continued status." That was from a discussion on the RfA talk page about whether or not blank oppose votes (And other oppose votes decided to be invalid for whatever reason) shouldn't be counted in votes for new admins. Talk about a act of bad faith and an attempt to disrupt wikipedia to make a point! I propose a question: what's the politically correct version of suggesting that someone's intentions are not honest? "I think that maybe, it seems to me (and correct me if I'm wrong), that this idea may be promoted, by some admins, as a less-than-honest method of trying to keep themselves in power. Again, I apologize if I'm wrong and will make a goat sacrifice if I have hurt anyone's feelings in saying this." Maybe I should start keeping a list of all the "personal attacks" that admins use, but then that list itself might be seen as a "personal attack" using this warped bizzaro-logic. Oh I should add that I didn't actually know this second block was in place until I tried editing my own user page and it was auto-reset, so yeah, it's kind of hard to argue it's not a bug. ---------------------------------------------- Nathan J. Yoder http://www.gummibears.nu/ http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key ----------------------------------------------

On 7/3/05, Sam Korn <smoddy(a)gmail.com> wrote: This has been reported many times before, and discussed here on this very list. Judging by recent responses, it is NOT seen as a bug, by some people. In fact it has been stated that it is operating exactly as intended. If it is operating as intended, then where in Wikipedia policy is this stated? I think you could search and search and never find it. In fact you would find exactly the opposite - that blocks are for specific periods of time. -- Peter in Canberra

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 Timwi wrote: Whoa whoa wait a minute before you start getting heavy-handed. The creationism which is possibly being called "not-mainstream-science" is /literal/ creationism - the "God made the world and everything in it in 7 days and the world is < 10,000 years old" type of creationism, the 45% figure. The 37% can be grouped into "mainstream scientific theory", which I assume would account for at least 15% of the other 18% - giving a total of 52%, which (unless I can't count) is *more* than 45% by, oh, 7% or so. The literal creationists are a minority, albeit a significant minority, but a minority nonetheless. Ah, but which form of creationism? Literal or otherwise? I find the interpretation of these statistics disturbing. This is the ENGLISH Wikipedia, not the Yankee Wikipedia. Your survey proves nothing about fact. Depending on how it was conducted, it may or may not indicate something about the opinions of the survey group, at the time the survey was carried out. - -- Alphax OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis

#2 is not the same as a belief in creation science. Plenty of people believe that God helped guide evolution in the same sense that God helps guide everything else, but that's not the same as creation science. I agree with alphax, the way that you're interpreting these statistics is a bit off. 57% is just a simple majority, it would be misleading to refer to it as most. You're also pulling more meaning out of that statistic than there is. That question is asking which one they lean more towards, which is different from accepting a belief wholesale. It's clear from the statistic you cited before that the majority aren't accepting creation science wholesale. People have been doing that to me, so I've just been hitting 'reply all' since it's easier as well. I'll just do it directly to the list then. ---------------------------------------------- Nathan J. Yoder http://www.gummibears.nu/ http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key ----------------------------------------------

Well, there we go: We now have to rewrite everything in from a "creationism" POV --because external, independently unverified polls, with unknown demographic factors and unknown questions, have expressed an overruling of both science consensus and WP-local consensus. Why is WP consensus not US general consensus? As people become more educated and involved in NPOV-based projects, the move toward rationality. NPOV requires at least a rational basis for article craftsmanship, which implies rationality in other areas. IIRC, the typical MBTI for WPdians is quite different from the average majority. WP by default is represented by bookish, eristic types. PR crusades by any particular irrational POV, regardless of its representaion, is bound to fail, simply because belief=irrationality, hence not NPOV. --- James Gibbon &lt;wikipedia(a)jamesgibbon.com&gt; wrote: __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail for Mobile Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/learn/mail

The arrogantly anti-theist bent of recent posts to this thread are quite unfortunate. I particularly take issue with the following: external, independently unverified polls, with unknown demographic factors and unknown questions, have expressed an overruling of both science consensus and WP-local consensus. Why is WP consensus not US general consensus? As people become more educated and involved in NPOV-based projects, the move toward rationality. NPOV requires at least a rational basis for article craftsmanship, which implies rationality in other areas. IIRC, the typical MBTI for WPdians is quite different from the average majority. WP by default is represented by bookish, eristic types. PR crusades by any particular irrational POV, regardless of its representaion, is bound to fail, simply because belief=irrationality, hence not NPOV. That is exactly the sort of fact-dismissing POV pushing I have always combatted by use of books of reference, and basic logic. There is a reason why state-education fosters atheism, and it has nothing to do with facts or logic. In the US, according to a survey published in Nature in 1997, four out of 10 scientists believe in God. Just over 45% said they did not believe, and 14.5% described themselves as doubters or agnostics. This ratio of believers to non-believers had not changed in 80 years. The majority of academics however... I shudder to think. Jack (Sam Spade)

Evolution can be backed up with evidence. That the earth is X billion years old can be backed up by evidence. That the earth orbits the sun can be backed up by evidence. Creationism can't be backed up by evidence, it is un-verifiable and un-falsifiable. Belief itself is not irrational. Belief that cannot be backed up can be. -- gkhan

Agreed, or to some extent atleast. Note that it's really hard to prove alot of these theories also. (Especially the ones about things in space we aren't near..). If they were easy to prove they wouldn't still be theories. :) On 7/30/05, Ray Saintonge &lt;saintonge(a)telus.net&gt; wrote: -- signature

On Jun 30, 2005, at 6:09 PM, Fred Bauder wrote: True enough, but it should be noted that the NPOV policy is also not a demand that we be ACTIVELY WRONG. -Snowspinner