[WikiEN-l] Creationism is not horse-shit, it's pseudo-science

Thu Jul 21 12:05:21 UTC 2005

Jtkiefer wrote:
> Your right calling creationism a science would be POV pushing, but if
> you take the stance that creationism is anything, science,
> pseudo-science, legend, myth, total bullshit... you're still gonna piss
> someone off which is an inherent problem with having an open medium like
> wikipedia.

The issue is generally easy enough to solve with freeform text in the
body of an article by "going meta" and shifting the emphasis carefully
until everyone is more or less satisfied.  I am not the only person who
has been pleasantly astounded at how well Wikipedia actually works at
producing good high-quality consensus explanations in this manner.

Categories, on the other hand, are not as easy because they are so
strictly limited.  If we had a category of "things which are widely
regarded, by scientists and others of a similar bent, as being less than
fully established science, but which are often, by those who are not
scientists, put forward as if they were science" then we'd have less
trouble, I think.  (And edit my description as you please until it's
satisfactorily neutral. :-))

<POV>
Now, a big part of the irritant in this discussion is that creationism
is, as a matter of simple ordinary fact, pseudo-science or worse.
Readers deserve to know, and quickly and simply, that treating
creationist theories as if they were somehow scientific is completely
and utterly unacceptable in scientific circles.  The category does that
concisely and correctly.
</POV>

I have been thinking for many days (but with no progress) about a better
name for the category.

--Jimbo