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Google De-indexes Talk.Origins, Won't Say Why UPDATED
J. J. Ramsey writes "Talk.Origins is an archive with thousands of pages exposing creationist pseudoscience. Rather mysteriously, Google pulled the plug on its search engine, giving only the vague reason: 'No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines.' This was apparently triggered by a recent cracking of the site that added 'hidden links to non-topical sites,' but Google won't say just what the violations were. Talk.Origins webmaster Wesley R. Elsberry believes that this Google policy harms honest webmasters." From the article: "My mission, whether I liked it or not, was to find and fix whatever problem the [Talk.Origins Archive] might have, with no guidance as to what the problem was and nothing at all about where to start looking... I was extremely lucky. The damage to my site was limited and in the first place that I happened to look. Other honest webmasters might not be so lucky. They may have to undertake an arduous process of vetting pages, essentially having to second-guess the mind of the cracker in trying to locate a problem that Google knows the exact location of." Thanks to an alert reader who sent in Matt's blog posting about how Google handles hacked sites.
You're missing the point. The article mentions that the webmaster got this message: No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines. Please review our webmaster guidelines and modify your site so that it meets those guidelines. Once your site meets our guidelines, you can request reinclusion and we'll evaluate your site. Which insinuates that there is a blacklist somewhere which contains talkorigins.org. It would not be a big deal to add an additional field to that listing which would allow for the following improved message: No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines on http://www.talkorigins.org/index.html (and possibly elsewhere). Please review our webmaster guidelines and modify your site so that it meets those guidelines. Once your site meets our guidelines, you can request reinclusion and we'll evaluate your site. See? Sure, it would be "easier", but a useful feature is still a useful feature, and this is one that would be easy to implement.
I am not a number - I am a free man!
What if you went through airport security and instead of saying "you can't carry that penknife on board" they just said "you have something forbidden"? When I code an error message into a piece of software I don't just say "You did something wrong" I know what the cause of the error is so I tell them.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
To paraphrase your post: "science is a religion". I disagree, please correct me if I misunderstood.
Science is based on a single "article of faith", ie: I belive the real world exists as I and others who inhabit said "real world" collectively percieve it. I can only prove with certainty that I exist and furthermore can only prove it to myself. If I do not have faith in the real world then "others" must be a figment of my imagination, a troublesome state of affairs since the imaginary/real others will declare me a psychopath and lock me up in a real/imaginary padded room.
Since I and "others" can observe and agree on things in and about the real world we can create testable theories that can be refined to better fit our observations and accurately predict outcomes. ie: We can practice the scientific method and refine our theories until we reach a (possibly non-existant) point where the only "assumption" is that the real world exists, or as I like to put it the Universe "just is".
So regarding a belief in evolution - The only faith required is the faith that the real world exists.
As for religion, it is based on blind faith, blind since I and "others" cannot percieve the same observations, these observations and associated theories fail the "real world" test because they cannot be demonstrated to "others" using their own perceptions. This does not mean religion is pointless or even psuedoscience, it simply means religion is not comprable to science (apples vs oranges). In my mind making such comparisons entirely misses the point of both endevours.
Psuedoscience, litteraly "fake science" is blind faith dressed in a lab coat. Sure creationism is a theory but it's NOT a scientific one, claiming otherwise is by definition, psudoscience.
Finally the lack of a strong scientific theory for the origin of life does not validate creationisim, nor does it invalidate the theory of evolution.
Bias: I suppose you could argue on some deep philosophical level that faith in the "real world" makes me biased toward...um...the real world, I can only wonder if that automatically means psychopath are unbiased? What does "science is a religion" prove? - I'm biased because science has a demonstratably superior track record of explaining and predicting the real world's behaviour whereas blind faith performs no better than random chance. Is that the kind of "bias" we are talking about here? - Because if it is, I am wondering how a non-phycopath can go to bed confident they will awake on the same planet the next morning?
Short cut to scientific enlightenment: Carl Sagan's book "A demon haunted world". It's also serves as an outstanding example of what a skeptic should be.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause
What came before the big bang? That question is meaningless, as time did not exist. So you have a few options, only one of them feasible. The first is that the universe is infinitely old and had no beginning. Once a view of atheists, this is no longer scientifically plausible. The second answer is that the universe came into existence from nothing - absolutely nothing. The third, and most reasonable, is that something else caused the universe to be created. This cause must itself be timeless, and spaceless, as time and space began to exist with the big bang.
So the atheist must either claim the absurdity that the universe came from nothing, or he(/she) must acknowledge that there was something that created it. And that *something* is inaccessible from scientific analysis. It is not, however, too far from the reach of philosophy and logic. We can draw reasonable conclusions about this entity.
The sick thing is that I have Google Adwords on that site so each day that Google don't list me, THEY are losing money. I estimate I get 10x the click through business from MSN search than I do from Google. I'd probably make 3x the profit (as would Google) if they'd index.
What I really find worrying (hello, 1500's are calling) is the method of reasoning by creationists, like yourself.
A: There was a big bang.
B: We currently don't know what was the cause of this.
C: There must be 'some higher being' that created the universe.
Now A and B do not lead to C, no matter how you reason. If you want to have a drop of credibility, you'll have to support your claims. However, you can not, thus your logic is flawed. What created the 'entity' you speak of? What came before it? Why did it create the universe? If you want to play the science game, you should be answering those questions. Science allows questions to be left open, but tries to answer as many as possible by using facts. Creationism is not, and is unlikely to ever be, scientific or logical. You are allowed to believe in the toothfairy for all I care, but unless you have evidence that a mystical entity is willing to pay for your teeth: keep your belief to yourself.
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