Communist sympathizers do not have a monopoly on heartbreaking stupid. For example, “Conservapedia,” a supposed conservative alternative to Wikipedia. The problem is that it’s not so much “conservative” as “150-year-out-of-date religious whackadoodlism.” Take, for instance, the page on the “Age Of The Earth:”

The Age of the Earth has been a matter of interest to humans for millennia. The subject is still debated today, particularly between young-Earth scientists, who believe that the Earth is only approximately 6,000-10,000 years old, and most scientific organisations who believe that Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old.[1]^[1] The scientific evidence points to a young age of the earth and the universe, and the biblical creation organization Creation Ministries International published an article entitled 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe, which further argues for the young age of the Earth.

Or this from the page on the planet Mars:

These relationships indicate a major geologic catastrophe on Mars resulting in massive volcanic activity. The dating of this event from craters places it at about the time of the Great Flood on Earth. This volcanic activity would have increased Mars’s atmospheric pressure to allow liquid water to flow on the surface and thus allow the flooding of the Meridiani Planum region.

This shows that, like Earth, Mars has evidence that it is only a few thousands of years old and not 4.6 billion years old.

A great many of the articles on Conservapedia about scientific topics do everything they can to jam a creationist point of view into the discussion (see, for example, the page on Dark Matter, where the authors go to lengths to give precedence to the “creationist” view, separating it from the “evolutionistic astronomers” theories. Or the page on Black Holes, the theory of Relativity, the page on Autism which blames it on vaccines, and, of course and most notoriously, the page on Evolution). This does a disservice all-round:

1) It makes conservatives in general look like idiots by association

2) It makes non-whackadoodle Christians look like idiots by association

3) It harms science in particular and society as a whole by spreading nonsense (such as the long-disproved meme about a link between autism and vaccinations)

Since Conservapedia first came online and I read in dismay the rubbish the authors/editors consider to be science, I’ve been hoping for the day when it is announced that the whole thing is a Moby-like hoax perpetrated by George Soros or Moveon.org or some such. Whether it is or not, the effect is the same. When some conservatives – and “some” would seem to be a pretty fair number – loudly and firmly proclaim that conservatism and fundamentalism are necessarily the same thing, they assure that conservatism will be on the losing end not only of elections, but history. There are many millions of Americans who think that the government should be much smaller, spending far less, taxation lower, regulation lower and that the FedGuv should be firmly constrained within the confines of the Constitution… but are not evangelicals, and/or recognize *actual* science, rather than creationist pseudo-scientific gibberish. In the basically binary political system the US currently has, where do these Conservapedia blockheads think these people are going to go? Saint Augustine knew this 1600 years ago when he wrote:

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. “

As true as this was back then about Christians who knew nothing of the natural world turning off “infidels” who were their scientific betters, it’s even more true today.