Conservapedia: Don’t Mess With Noah’s Flood

ByCarl Zimmer
February 27, 2007
2 min read

I suspect poking around Conservapedia will become one of my new tools for procrastination. You’re guaranteed a jaw drop within a couple minutes of searching on this Wikipedia for conservatives. It occurred to me that I had not yet bothered to look up “creationism.” The entry is a whiplash of a read, with critics and backers of creationism having it out, sometimes within a single paragraph. What really struck me was the section on “Attempts to Criticize Creationism.” The history page shows that it is authored by “Aschlafly”–presumably Andrew Schlafly, founder of the entire site. It is marked “Don’t delete these changes.”

And what has been set in stone? After some discussion of St. Augustine, we get to some good stuff:

(2) Young-earth creationism, which holds that the earth is about 7000 years old, is consistent with many observations, such as the existence and nature of the freshwater Great Lakes, the young moon and the Grand Canyon. Opponents repeatedly attempt to censor the sale of publications by the U.S. Parks Service near the Grand Canyon containing differing views of its development.

(3) Creationism is accepted by most Americans and by the most significant scientists in history. Intolerance by opponents of creationism has led to a silencing of contemporary scientists on this issue, but many risk their careers by speaking out against theories that earth is somehow billions of years old.

Conservapedia describes itself as “one of the largest user-controlled free encyclopedias on the internet.” Just keep your hands off Noah’s flood.

Oh, by the way–perhaps you’re wondering about the young moon?

“There is no plausible non-creation theory of origin for the Moon at this time.”

Update: 3/1/07 11:30 am: Looks like the “attempts to criticize evolution creationism” section has been shipped over to the entry for Young Earth Creationism. But astronomers will be dismayed to learn that apparently there is still no plausible non-creation theory of origin for the Moon at this time.

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