[Textbook-l] Re: Textbooks

[Jimmy Wales]

Toby Bartels wrote:
> An important point is the existence (or potential existence)
> of other articles on parts of the discipline of scientific creationism
> (such as the attempts to pin down the dating of the flood
> by cross-referencing Genesis with geological data)
> and similarly, the (potential) existence of a textbook on that topic.
> To be sure, we don't have those articles on Wikipedia
> and probably never will have that textbook -- but we could.

Boy, I think that's right on target.

I would predict that an article like that would be a challenge for us,
since I presume that most of the regulars in the wikipedia community
(including myself) would have little patience with so-called
scientific creationism.

But a highly detailed article about scientific creationism, including
a fair assessment of the types of efforts you're talking about (i.e.
development of alternative theories of dating) that both mainstream
scientists and creationists could agree on, should be possible!

(I should include the disclaimer 'reasonable mainstream scientists'
and 'reasonable creationists' to avoid the notion that every possible
nutcase in the world can always be accomodated.)

> The text in [[en:Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]] of course must be changed,
> since it refers to a comprehensive encyclopaedia on everything.
> But this is /context/, not the /essence/ of NPOV.

I think that's right.

--Jimbo