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# Creationism/Talk

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  "Neologisms like "scientific creationism" and "intelligent design theory" are regarded by the vast majority of practising scientists, theologians and philosophers of science as meaningless.

The names of the theories aren't what are regarded as meaningless, are they? Perhaps crucial elements of the theories are regarded as meaningless. (E.g., perhaps no good sense can be given to the notion of creation ex nihilo.) In any case, probably the more important thing to mention is that the theories, insofar as they do seem to be meaningful at all, seem to be unsupported and unverifiable. (I can maintain that the theories are unverifiable but, disagreeing with verificationism, believe them to be more-or-less meaningful--just false. Far from all scientists, theologians, and philosophers of science are verificationists.)

How about: "A very large ['vast' pours salt in the wound] majority of practising scientists, theologians and philosophers of science believe scientific creationism and intelligent design theory [identifying these as 'neologisms' in this context is to dismiss them]--terms many of them cannot use without shuddering--to be untenable, either because they are scientifically unsupportable and unverifiable, or because they are outright nonsense." --LMS

In reference to the following:

  [We need a way to sum up the situation that does not make it seem as though Wikipedia officially endorses evolutionary science, as the above does. (Whoever gets the last word seems the victor, eh?) Yes, that sounds ridiculous, but that's an illustration of lack of bias.]

One can carry the "lack of bias" mantra too far. If Wikipedia didn't officially endorse evolutionary science, it would be derelict in its duty to educate. Its only obligation to non-bias is to accurately report that some people choose not to believe in evolution. It should also not call those people idiots, or otherwise make derogatory comments about them (the word "nonsense" is probably a bit strong, though I happen to believe that, and I like the rest of LMS's phrasing). But it most definitely should report accurately that evolution, as endorsed with near unanimity among educated biologists, accurate describes the biological world, and that creationism does not. The article on Numerology is a good example: it clearly shows why it doesn't make sense, accurately identifies it as nonscientific, and merely reports that some people believe it. --LDC

I don't think that what I asked carries the lack of bias policy too far. I very strongly disagree with your stated view that Wikipedia would be derelict in its duty to educate by not officially endorsing evolutionary science. In fact, I really wonder why you say this. Insofar as education includes the teaching of values, as it does and should (I think), I don't think that Wikipedia should engage in education; it should engage, rather, in reporting. Compare these two claims of yours:

1. But it most definitely should report accurately that evolution, as endorsed with near unanimity among educated biologists, accurate describes the biological world, and that creationism does not.
2. The article on Numerology is a good example: it clearly shows why it doesn't make sense, accurately identifies it as nonscientific, and merely reports that some people believe it.

The Numerology example doesn't illustrate what you want it to illustrate. The Numerology article does not state that Numerology is false. It states that it is nonscientific, which (I am supposing) is uncontroversial. In precisely the same way, I think we should not claim that evolution accurately describes the biological world and creationism does not. There are many good reasons, that we can review if you wish, that it is far preferable to say, instead: most scientists embrace evolutionary theory and reject creationism. This gets the idea across.

I don't think encyclopedias should be in the business of doing anything other than stating facts that sane, thinking people--among whom I would include, yes, creationists--can agree upon. If not on the subject matter itself, then they can usually agree on how competing views are characterized; or at least they can agree to allow each side to be permitted to characterize its own view sympathetically and to criticize other views. When an article becomes contentious, I think we should "go meta."

Why should there be any resistance to this? I'm very curious to know. Do you want to have a (another) debate about this on NeutralPointOfView? --Larry Sanger

P.S. I find your resistance to the word "nonsense" puzzling, and it indicates that, perhaps, you aren't entirely understanding the nonbias policy the way I understand it. I think it is all-important that the claim of nonsense is attributed to someone, rather than asserted to be the case by the author of the article itself. When it is attributed to someone, it immediately becomes uncontroversial and straightforwardly fact-stating (no matter how irritating to creationists). --LMS

Sorry, but strong disagreement with the above. Neutrality is about stating facts rather than opinions, and the existance of evolution is as close to a fact as we are ever going to get. Certainly it is going to be taken as such on virtually every biology page written, because the phylogeny of organisms is important, and it would be an unbelievable headache to have to qualify it in every case to avoid offending a minority of people who are wrong. I say giving fair treatment to anything so unanimously decreed as false by workers in the field is silly and makes a mockery of the concept of objectivity. Or should we also make allowances for the flat earth hypothesis on our geography and astronomy pages?

As for creationists still being thinking and sane people, well - yes, they probably are. But that doesn't mean that the hypothesis is any less ridiculous. Aristotle believed in physics that can be disproved with a bowl and some water. And what will we do with the views of historical revisionists? --JG

Perhaps--consider the possibility a moment--it is possible, in most articles that elaborate evolutionary theory and processes, simply to use a few words that imply that the claims in question are the views and the results of work by scientists. Then creationists will have nothing to do complain about.

You say "neutrality is about stating facts rather than opinions." Well, that's a quick-and-easy way to put it. It is more accurate to say that, where there is significant disagreement on a point, then neutrality demands that the disagreement be fairly characterized. Be careful to understand what this does and does not imply. It does imply that evolutionary science not be stated as fact and creation science as obviously false (rather, it implies that these views be described as being held by certain groups of people, and then the public can draw their own conclusions; you don't mind that they draw their own conclusions, do you?). It does not imply that, whenever you mention anything about evolutionary theory, you say something to the effect that creationists disagree. It does not imply that you outright assert, "Evolution is just a hypothesis." This too would be hugely controversial. You would be fully in your rights to say that most scientists fully believe evolution to be a very well-substantiated theory, as well-substantiated as many less controversial theories.

In general, and most importantly, this principle does not imply that our articles have to look like we think that evolutionary theory and creationism are equally weighted, and we (Wikipedia article authors) can't make up our minds. If you think that's what it implies, you don't understand the principle. Don't you think it's possible not to take an official stand, and yet still very strongly be in favor of one of the views? Of course it is. Why would you resist doing this, then, when you can (after all) say that most respected scientists reject creationism? It seems you want to cow creationists and people whose minds are not made up--as silly as they might seem to you and me--into believing what you believe. That's never the right way to go about it. Is there something wrong with letting people draw their own conclusions?

The Wikipedia articles on controversial subjects are not likely to change any minds. The kooks will go on believing kooky things, the rational people will go on being rational, and we can take enormous pride in reporting accurately on the situation.

As to historical revisionists, sometimes they're right, eh? And even when they're not, sometimes their views need to be reported--if only as a fascinating sociological phenomenon. --LMS

The problem is that evolution is not controversial, not among anyone except the misinformed and those with an agenda. I honestly think that continual treatment of evolution as if it is the consensus of an extreme majority of scientists, rather than fact, is misleading. Do you think that it is a good idea to prefix every page with such a statement? "Most scientists now believe that Calcium has an atomic weight of 40.078..." It's silly, but if not, then topics like evolution are going to appear strongly singled out as questionable.

Historical revisionists are probably more important even. Yes, they can be interesting, but statement of their opinions as anything even resembling potential fact isn't just wrong, it is potentially offensive. To take the extreme example, even if it invokes Godwin's law against myself, what do you suppose would be the response if we said the holocaust was something widely considered to have occured by most historians, rather than something that occured? I'd consider that an awful legitamization of some of the worst opinions available. Or would you throw out such claims and keep those of other revisionists, less offensive but certainly no more valid? I say the best ground for decision is on merit; meritless arguments should not need consideration, unless we want to pretend all of reality is an opinion. And those probably include young earth creationism.

--Josh Grosse

I'm with Josh here. Evolution is not controversial within the scientific community. As someone who has spent the best part of ten years researching creationism, I can attest that Creationists are not crazies or ignorant (far from it in many cases). However, in accordance with the views of 99% of theologians, scientists and philosophers, they are wrong. We should state so emphatically. To do otherwise is to be spineless. Evolution has traditionally been singled out among scientific areas and people are more likely to use accomodationist language so as to placate a vocal minority. This, I assure you, is contrary to the aims of any good project (particularly if it is haunted by the shades of the original Encyclopediestes). Evolution is a fact, natural selection is currently one of the few scientific mechanisms by which evolution can occur. Move on.

--Jmlynch

Hear! Hear! I personally admire philosophers a great deal, study philosophy, and enjoy throwing the monkey wrench of doubt into common beliefs as much as anyone. But when philosophers and others go beyond rational skepticism to justify what are simply and clearly mistakes, one should throw at them what one personally believes to be a brick, and assuage one's conscience with the assurance that they are free to believe otherwise. --LDC

I'll reply later, but I would like to see someone reply, dispassionately, to my arguments. I had some, if you didn't notice. You're all rational people; you should be able to appreciate my efforts. --LMS

I think we all agree with your arguments, and even with your value judgement that Wikipedia articles should be fact-stating and unbiased (two very independent goals). I think our disagreements here are with (1) the standard by which we decide that something is a fact, and (2) the extent of implied bias in fact-stating prose. There is no such thing as a fact without a standard by which it is judged to be a fact--even simple observational statements like "Fred claims that grass is green" imply that someone at some point judged this to be a fact because he observed Fred saying it (thus "direct observation" being the standard), and might be argued by someone. I happen to think "agreed upon with near unanimity by persons educated in the field" is a sufficient criterion for factualness. Sure, that will occasionally require us to change when some new discovery upsets an established fact, but so what? Any standard will require change--so why not choose one that's useful. Even your stricter standard of "totally uncontroversial" is no guarantee against future change.

Further, one can easily propagandize by stating only facts. A full page of "Creationists believe that...because..." with no reference to contradictory evidence or any other claim is clearly a propaganda piece, even though it happens to be fact-stating. The goal of eliminating bias requires more than merely being fact-stating. It also requires us to judge the rhetorical effect of an article, and to add rebutting facts where needed. I also believe that it is fundamentally impossible to eliminate all bias, and the all readers of any purportedly-factual article should understand that all authors have biases, and read in that context.

I hold the additional value judgments that Wikipedia should be lucid and useful. I believe that being overly afraid of bias sometimes compromises those goals, by cluttering articles with reportage on clearly useless beliefs held by a few minorities. This latter is certainly open to argument. Yes, an article specifically about Creationism (which is by its very nature a controversial belief) should probably stick to making claims about who said what, how many believe what, and how such beliefs compare to other scientific and theological beliefs. Reporting on a controversy as a controversy is a worthwhile thing for an encyclopedia to do. The articles should also point out arguments on both sides, but we should further report what are actual arguments and what are simply unsupported claims, because that is useful. Even the article on evolution should probably mention that there are a few people who choose to dispute it, and point to the article on Creationism, though it should otherwise be written simply and clearly by treating it as a the ordinary uncontroversial fact it is.

General articles on biology, on the other hand, should simply treat evolution as uncontroversial, because no serious biologist disagrees, and failure to do so compromises understanding of the subject. Articles about radiocarbon dating or tree rings should not be cluttered with an unnecessary reference to the fact that a few folks happen to believe that God placed all of the old rocks and trees here 6000 years ago, and is just trying to confuse us. --LDC

Can someone tell me where the matter involved in the Big Bang came from? If not, you will have to cut creationism in one stripe or color or another, some slack. All creationism is not biblical literalism. It is, however, in every case, an effort to arrive at a rational answer which science has so far not been able to provide ie, where everything came from. This is not Evolution/Talk, but Creationism/Talk. As something better than half the world populace embraces some kind of creationist explanation for the beginning of things, then we are not talking about appeasing a vocal minority here. We are talking about acknowledging what we don't know - the first step to finding out...

The simple belief that the world as it exists was created by a supernatural being is not what we are talking about here. The word "creationist" is never used to mean that; the word means denial of biological evolution, and that's what we're talking about. What you describe is merely Theism. --LDC

Let's get this straight once and for all (I have to do this with students every semester). Firstly, the Big Bang or any other theory of cosmogenesis has nothing to do with evolutionary thinking. Cosmologists could theorize about the universe and it would not dent the theory of evolution one bit. Secondly, and almost most importantly, creationists don't really care about cosmology - it's the proposition that humans evolved that creates problems for them (a proposition that is indepndant of cosmology). Lastly, theories of abiogenesis also have nothing to do with evolution. Evolutionary theory explains how the diversity of life on Earth came to it's present state, not how life got here and not how the universe got here.

Creationism is not an 'effort to arrive at a rational answer'. Rationality has nothing to do with it. As any theologian will tell you, the project of rationalizing the existence of a creator has fallen into disrepute for various reasons. Creationists can believe whatever they like about the history of life, but that does not mean they make scientific statements.

--Jmlynch

Jim I am talking about creationism, not about evolution (pro or con). Did you notice that? Humans arrive at answers through reason. Use of reason = 'effort to arrive at a rational answer.' Let's get this straight once and for all - creationism, as a holding, is not necesarily either pro- or anti-evolution. That is the area where we see the most frequent fireworks and high-profile clashes, but please quit cofusing the two. Again - this is creationism/Talk.

'effort to arrive at a rational answer' = "I can see what caused z; y caused it. I can see what caused y; x caused it. I have investigated until I am blue in the face, and cannot tease out of the universe what caused a. Maybe whatever caused it is not natural, but super-natural. Maybe that's why I can't get at it." This may not be scientific method, but it is how people rationalize. Ie, it is an effort to arrive at rational answer.

This is where creationism as a subject comes from. Then we later on down the road get into such things as oral tradition, legends, myths, scriptures, and other means of passing down the stories about the supernatural. Never proved nor disproved, neither provable nor disprovable by scientific means, they are, by definition, unscientific. Now there are some parts of this tradition which seem to run afoul of scientific evidence. The most notable of these in recent time involves timescale of this planet and origin of species. When the scientist points this out to the dyed-in-the-wool hardline fundamental biblical literalist, the irresistible force meets the immoveable object. At the same time, bits and pieces of biblical history are verfied by archaeology daily. So, "See! The Bible is the infallible word of God!" and the scientist cringes.

BUT it is not necessarily the case that unscientific = wrong, any more that it is the case that proof of bible history a = proof of the whole bible.

To say that creationists believe that someone created things in the beginning is not to say that they beleive, 1-for-1, that SCIENCE in its infinite wisdom, ultimate arbiter of all human knowledge, is wrong. It is to say - "we believe these extra-scientific facts to be true." And who is to gainsay them?

When writing about evolution, that other topic, explain what theories it encompasses.

When writing about creationism, explain what theories it encompasses.

When writing about cosmologies, mention creationism. It happens to be one such.

Why is it necessary to flay the creationist? Has someone here disproven that a supreme influence, possibly an intelligent one, created the universe? Has someone read the report of a researcher who has? I think not. It's unfalsifiable. So it's unscientific. That does not make it wrong, or even irrational. "The geologic record does not support a literal biblical version of planetary time scale and origin of species." So how does that invalidate creationism as an overall subject?

LMS - I am with you 100%

and...

Blatantly stealing from Webster:

Main Entry: cre·a·tion·ism Pronunciation: -sh&-"ni-z&m Function: noun Date: 1880

  a doctrine or theory holding that matter, the various forms of life, and the world were created by God out of nothing and usually in the way described in Genesis -- compare EVOLUTION

Hey LDC - how do mean creationism is "never" used to mean that the world as it exists was created by a supernatual being?

OK, then, describe that as another sense of the word. The most common meaning of the word is as your definition above describes it: that various forms of life were created, as opposed to the belief that they evolved from a single earlier form. This is what a newspaper or magazine would generally mean when they describe someone as a "creationist writer" or something. If you choose to also use the word to mean mere theist, or to think of creationism as cosmology rather than biology, I suppose you're free to do so, but that's a second sense of the word, and perhaps separate articles should treat them as such. --LDC

If webster and I are wrong as to what the word means, then we'd better re-write the wikipedia article to reflect that creationism is only anti-evolutionism and nothing else.

The defense rests. You guys divvy up creationism into different articles however you want. maybe there should be an article biology/creationism (how's that for an oxymoron?) and another (which is the branch under which I created this one) cosmology/creationism arrows pointed to see each other, see theism, etc. I don't have the time right now. Damn - I just realized my cookies have somehow been cleared. This has been AyeSpy raving on above. Did not mean to hide my light under a bushel...

Then the article is misleading: the very first sentence says that creationism is the belief that a supreme being "created the physical universe and all life contained therein." Make up your mind: if you are a calling it a cosmology, then you can't include life, because life evolved long after the birth of the universe. If you want to include life, then call it a biology and take your lumps from the evolutionists. --LDC

Larry's Big Reply

Before I reply, let me just say that if we can agree that creationism as it stands, apart perhaps from the fact that the evolutionist insists on having the last word, is adequately unbiased, then our dispute is probably academic. So--on with the academic dispute!

I totally agree with your guys' attitude toward creationism. I think it's silly nonsense, too. Let's get that straight--we don't need to debate the merits of the theory (unless Bruce wants to do so). Moreover, I am probably the biggest commonsense realist and defender of rationality here. If you think my position is rooted in anything like relativism, that is excellent evidence that you don't understand my position and that you need to re-read what I've written more carefully. Jimbo, too, is a realist and defender of rationality, and he shares my view (in generalities, at least), as you can see on NeutralPointOfView. Gee, how can that be? Read on.

Why on earth would I wanna do that, Larry? It's not like I advocate Creationism as such or anything. I only tried to point out that beating on the creationists is counter-productive. - AyeSpy (aka BrucieBaby)

1. Is evolution controversial? Yes--to the public at large, which will be reading Wikipedia. No--to scientists. For whom are we writing? The public at large--and scientists. (Perhaps that's what causes our problem here.) Lee says: "General articles on biology, on the other hand, should simply treat evolution as uncontroversial, because no serious biologist disagrees, and failure to do so compromises understanding of the subject." I think this is wrong on two counts. First, while evolution is uncontroversial among serious biologists, it is controversial among an alarmingly large portion of the general public; you do them and yourselves no favors by ignoring this controversy. Second, I see no reason to believe that recognizing that nonbiologists do not accept evolution as fact in any way "undermines understanding" of evolution. It doesn't even undermine your real goal, of course, which is to get people to accept evolution instead of getting caught up in idiotic creationist nonsense. In fact, the opposite is true: by failing to recognize the controversy, you essentially alienate the people you most want to teach. You would prefer indoctrination, it seems.

I think you may overestimate the controversy over evolution in the general public, but I agree with your point wholeheatedly - AyeSpy

2. Will we have to qualify every statement, or even every page, with a statement to the effect that it is the view of scientists? No, of course not. Why not? Because it's not controversial to anyone. Will we have to highlight discredited minority views as prominently as scientific fact? Of course not.

3. If we do describe scientific fact as what is accepted by all or nearly all scientists, then how are we misleading anyone? The question, again, is how? Have we encouraged anyone to believe anything other than what you want them to believe? Where's the downside you all fear?

4. Josh writes: "Historical revisionists are probably more important even. Yes, they can be interesting, but statement of their opinions as anything even resembling potential fact isn't just wrong, it is potentially offensive." Josh, I am not saying that historical revisionism should be presented as "anything even resembling potential fact." I am saying that the view should be described and appropriately attributed. How does that imply that the opinions will be presented as "anything even resembling potential fact"? Please bear in mind that we can reserve plenty of room for attributed explanations of why mainstream historians regard various kinds of historical revisionism as so much hokum. Our including such explanations is absolutely essential to having an unbiased encyclopedia, by the way.

5. Josh again: "To take the extreme example, even if it invokes Godwin's law against myself, what do you suppose would be the response if we said the holocaust was something widely considered to have occured by most historians, rather than something that occured? I'd consider that an awful legitamization of some of the worst opinions available." I would say that this is a very poor illustration (i.e., a "straw man") of my position. I imagine we should first clearly present what is generally believed about the Holocaust; then, perhaps quite far down in the article, we should have a paragraph or two that says something to the effect that the above is accepted (in generalities anyway) by all but a very small handful of trained historians, called Holocaust deniers and revisionists, blah blah blah, and explain the facts of that. This then attributes the claims about the Holocaust in a perfectly appropriate way and also mentions the fact that there is another (very minority) view. At the same time, we can state that most historians (most people) find such revisionism not only obviously false, but extremely morally repugnant. I hope I am making my position clearer now.

6. Is my position "spineless"? Jmlynch thinks so: "in accordance with the views of 99% of theologians, scientists and philosophers, they are wrong. We should state so emphatically. To do otherwise is to be spineless. ... This, I assure you, is contrary to the aims of any good project (particularly if it is haunted by the shades of the original Encyclopediestes)." Well, as a modern-day encyclopedist who has thought for many, many hours about this stuff (even before I started working on an encyclopedia), I can "assure you" that our doing what I ask is not in the slightest "spineless." Well, so much for mutual assurances; now to arguments. I think I can understand your reason for thinking so. Your assumption appears to be that, if we do not explicitly declare something to be true, then the reader can draw certain inferences about us--such as that we wish to placate creationists, or that we think creationism might be scientifically respectable, or that we might be creationists ourselves, etc., etc. Well, no. Reasonable people do not draw such inferences when presented with unbiased texts. You yourself, Jim, would not typically draw such inferences--you know better, of course. Suppose that a history text adopted a policy of failing to identify Nazi scum as the murdering bastards they were--but simply reported the facts about what they did. Would it be reasonable to assume that the text's author(s) might just be willing to admit the possibility that the Nazis were upstanding citizens doing a service to Europe?

Factually, I have read some very dry and "non-judgemental" accounts, practically devoid of adjectives. They still gave me the heebeejeebees and I never thought for a moment the author favored the Nazis. - AyeSpy

7. Are being fact-stating and unbiased independent goals? No: in order to be unbiased, you must be fact-stating. In particular, you must be very clear about how you word the facts about what various majority and minority positions are. I contrast (in the present context--not when I'm talking metaphysics & philosophy of language, where 'fact' is a technical term) fact with opinion; opinions can be correct (and thus fact-stating), but one identifies something as a fact to emphasize that it is not under dispute, and one identifies something as an opinion in order to emphasize that it is under dispute. If, in our evolution article, we say that evolution is a "proven fact," while this is no doubt true (i.e., evolutionary theory has met ordinary standards of scientific evidence), the force of saying it is that evolution is simply not under dispute. Well, it is under dispute by your readers, guys. And (damnably) that's a fact. You aren't going to change their minds, or make the world otherwise any safer for rationality and science (which I love at least as much as you do), by explicitly averring that evolution is a fact and creationism is false. Actually, what you do is close off the avenues of discourse by doing so, setting up the less-rational folk in an antagonistic stance toward you, and make it harder to help them see the light. (Think of this as intellectual diplomacy.)

8. "Further, one can easily propagandize by stating only facts." Very true; that's why we shouldn't refer to my position as merely that articles should be fact-stating. They should be unbiased. I've explained what I mean by this in many different places many different times. "A full page of 'Creationists believe that...because...' with no reference to contradictory evidence or any other claim is clearly a propaganda piece, even though it happens to be fact-stating." I totally agree, and I will thank you for not setting up further caricatures of my view.

9. "I also believe that it is fundamentally impossible to eliminate all bias, and the all readers of any purportedly-factual article should understand that all authors have biases, and read in that context." But whenever we can identify bias, we can eliminate it--one way or another, and usually by going "meta." Give yourself some credit; people are creative; we can think of ways to eliminate bias when we spot it. (If you're still not convince, I suspect this is because you have a useless, impossibly-restrictive concept of bias. Personally, I prefer my concepts to be useful.)

10. "I believe that being overly afraid of bias sometimes compromises those goals, by cluttering articles with reportage on clearly useless beliefs held by a few minorities." Why think that articles will be cluttered with views held by minorities? If they are minority views, they will not be highlighted and ubiquitous in the same way that the majority views will be. That's as it should be. No one can reasonably complain.

My conclusion:

We should not impose our values on other thinking people. You are all liberal-minded people, I trust--not liberal politically, necessarily, but liberal in the sense that you want to free minds. I enjoin you to think carefully about the best way to achieve this. By failing to take stands on controversial issues, we aren't demonstrating weakness--in fact, we are demonstrating the strength of our faith in the minds of our fellow human beings. We should let them arrive at their own conclusions. We should trust them to use their own minds--just as you want to be trusted. More benighted souls than our enlightened selves will appreciate our stance and be more apt to listen when we hand down the truth.

I don't know if I can make my case any more completely...

No need to... - AyeSpy

Larry

Yes, well said. Perhaps my initial reaction comes from a different mindset about the "audience" of our work, since I generally think of encyclopedias as things used by schoolchildren, or adults looking for quick explanations of things outside their fields of expertise. Your view seems more appropriate to a collaboratively built growing record of facts, usable as a resource even for those with expertise. I certainly cannot argue with that vision, or your method for achieving it.

I would like to expand upon something you mentioned in passing that I think is important: you mentioned that an article might written largely as though uncontroversial, followed by a mention that the text above is believed by a majority, but controversial in that others believe something else (which is then linked to). I think this is a great method of doing it, and if using this technique meets with your approval I wholeheartedly endorse it as a way to write both lucidly and without bias. This seems appropriate for the article on the majority view, while the article on the minority view might be written more from the minority's own viewpoint (though careful to remain fact-stating).

Finally, I have encountered some places where I think minor amounts of open bias in an otherwise factual article is useful and not very controversial, so some simple method of doing those appropriately is needed. The specific example I have in mind is my pages on poker, which are full of opinions like "X makes a more interesting game than Y", or "game X is best played with betting structure Y", or "clay chips are easier to use than thin plastic ones", and so on. I originally wrote most of this text as a potential book which was full of my personal opinions. In the process of Wikifying it have removed opinions that were more significant and might be more controversial ("many casinos have rule X, which is stupid and counterproductive"), but those other little tidbits are the kind of thing I think someone learning the game of poker from a text such as this will want to know, and I think it's a waste of time to reword them all into "many poker players believe..." form. Of course if someone does object at some point (perhaps a manufacturer of plastic chips?), then rewording and pointing to other opinions might be necessary, but until then, I think they are clean and useful as they are. --LDC

Scientists believing in evolution as part of their work (basically all geologists and a good chunk of biologists) have made themselves easy targets for the religious loonies.

Evolution as taught and published in research papers, up to about 1980 was almost always a crock of unscientific shit, based more on bizarre ethical and religious ideas that hardly anyone belived, than on any observational basis, or any relationship with other well-founded scientific theories. That it took a bunch of loonies with no interest in science to put these failings on the agenda is very sad.

Since then evolutionary scientists have started to put their house in order. They still have a way to go, but some of the leading biologists and geologists are now researching evolution in a scientific way, and a genuine scientific theory of evolution is starting to emerge.

In teaching, especially at high school level, evolution is still stuck firmly in the 17th century. I really mean that. Although the name of Darwin is always mentioned, his ideas hardly ever are, and are never taken seriously, let alone some of the more modern ideas.

Maybe some of this should make it into the article (or maybe a different article about history of theory of evolution). Obviously it is not encyclopedia material as is, someone would have to do a complete rewrite from scratch.

I'm a big Steven Jay Gould fan. It's not so much because he's a brilliant geologist/biologist. Too be honest, I don't know whether he's brilliant, sort of good at it, or just plain incompetant. I like him more because he's the sort of person to write half a book about .400 hitters in baseball and essays on the Defenstration of Prague, and do a very fine job of it. I don't unswervingly trust everything he says, though, because I have no background and little comparable research to base it on. But the only mention I've ever heard him make of creationism is interesting, and I think it should be brought up here.

According to him, in The Panda's Thumb, I think it was, Creationism is an almost entirely American phenonmenon. He claims that most Europeans, even the most stringently religious, entirely embrace Evolution. John Paul II very nearly ( though not quite ) called evolution incontrovertible awhile ago. Since the only time I've ever been to Europe was a very bitter and unhappy one month stay in Oxford, with not much theological conversation, I was wondering whether or not this could be confirmed by someone who knows more about what they're talking about than myself. As for the rest of the world, I'd imagine that East Asia and India isn't very fertile creationist ground, and I've got no clue how Islam treats the issue.

I'd imagine that if the world view is significantly different than the American view, that probably would affect Wikipedia's policy in some way. The way I look at the matter, is that Darwinism, Natural Selection, or whatever you want to call it ( Evolution, which I've been unfortunately using so far, is a gross misnomer ) is a scientific law. Plain and simple. What goes up, must come down. The sun rises in the east. E equals MC squared, and species diversify according to rules of competition, climatic changes, genetics, and other such things that are well known. Those very few biologists who are strict creationist set out in the field of biology with the express intent of disproving evolution, and still have no basis for the 7 days nonsense. As for the original amino acids and divinely inspired puddles of goo, I just personally don't care whether or not god or anyone else got involved. But that's just me. Seckstu

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