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Creationists Manipulating Search Results
reallocate writes: It looks like some Creationists are manipulating search results to ensure websites pushing religion are appearing in response to queries about science. Ask Google "What happened to the dinosaurs?" and you'll see links to Creationist sites right at the top. (And, right now, several hits to sites taking note of it.) Google has a feedback link waiting for you to use it.
The answer is that they're still here, SEO-ing the search results.
Dinosaurs, the ones related to lizards, can be traced through the fossil record to a number of extinction events.
Dinosaurs, the ones related to creationism, can be traced through the search results to the pages they've tweaked for rankings.
"Everyone trying to manipulate search results"
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The actual article seems to only say that one web site, titled "What really happened to the dinosaurs", appears in response to one particular search query, "What happened to the dinosaurs".
That's annoying and stupid... but it's not the same as the hyped headline "creationists manipulating results."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm sure every ideologue out there wanting to brand their dogmatic bullshit as truth is doing the same thing.
Their zeal to push their bullshit in a vain attempt to still appear relevant. Kinda like dinosaurs in a tar pit... how fitting.
Maybe someone should tell them that nobody outside the US even remotely takes that "controversy" serious? I do not know a single politician outside the US who would think that even remotely considering pushing an agenda as harebrained as creationism is anything but political suicide. Hell, even our ultra-conservatives would not even touch that shit with a 10 foot pole, knowing that they'd be looked at like they just claimed the tooth fairy existed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
C'mon guys. you just can't make that kind of shit up. There isn't enough weed on the planet for that. It must be divinely inspired.
"I find the defendant not guilty. As for Science versus Religion, I'm issuing a restraining order. Religion must stay 500 yards from Science at all times"
identified Christians as potential extremists
Identified specific Christians as potential extremists. And they do exist - why is this in any way a surprise? Every faith-based ideology (Marxism obviously falls into this category) eventually attracts violent nutjobs. Even Buddhism has violent extremists, some of whom are currently hard at work ethnically cleansing a Muslim minority in Myanmar. There are also left-wing environmentalist extremists, along with Maoists and anarchists, all of whom the DHS and FBI also track.
Among other things, I find it curious that DHS was searching so hard for "non-Islamist" extremists - almost like Islamist extremists had DHS tacit approval.
The fact that most worldwide religious extremists are currently Muslim does not mean we should give a free pass to domestic extremists just because they happen to follow your preferred religion. (And what makes you so certain that the DHS wasn't investigating domestic Islamists too?) Since Christians are an overwhelming majority in the US, it is certainly logical to look for extremists in that population, especially since they may have an easier time blending in, and there are existing organized extremist groups, some of which have a long history of violence. (I should note that Timothy McVeigh was an "honorably discharged military veteran".)
Creation, evolution... it is all based on belief since you can't prove either.
Can you pick which one has vastly more evidence for it?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
If creationists want to be taken seriously they need to stop arguing science on points that aren't disputed.
If creationists wants to be taken seriously they need to create a reason for God to exist, that doesn't fall back on weak, shallow, sad logic paradoxes which don't make sense.
If creationists wants to be taken seriously, they need to prove aspects of there given religion.
The problem is, no creationist has ever been able to do this, they always have to result to shallow, weak, sad and pathetic arguments, against topics they don't understand and using logic that doesn't work. Just saying a theory doesn't make sense, doesn't make it false and doesn't make valid controversy. You can't just radically claim that Dinosaurs don't exist and never once provide evidence of that, that isn't a separate view, it's just a wrong view until you have evidence. Creationism has become the new face of the uneducated adult, and the worst part about this is that it's being pushed onto kids. Creationism can't be taken seriously until it starts making serious, adult arguments. Just because a creationist is to scared to grow up and drop the security blanket, doesn't mean they have a point, they don't.
Your theory requires that the universe be infinite. No proof of that yet, and maybe never.
What is so hard to believe that we created the "god" myth? It's been done many times over the ages, so we have more proof of that than the other way around.
Otherwise, who created god?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Yes, but all those other people who created gods were just making them up, whereas the god we made up is the Real Thing!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually, there was a big stunning double rainbow over Dublin last week as the people of Ireland rejected the teachings of the Church and approved same sex marriage.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u...
Texas, on the other hand, outlawed gay marriage and got deadly floods and tornadoes.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/26/...
Coincidence?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The real problem is, in an infinite, probabilistic universe, even the smallest chance that God exists is a certainty. Of course, there is no shortage of conflicting, self defeating pseudo-science airheads that will believe anything else rather than making an attempt at living a Christian life with a little less ego.
I do not think that this "probability" means what you think it means.
I will try to tell you. No, it is too much, I will sum up.
Suppose you have an infinite barrel of marbles, 10% of which are green. Then the probability of drawing a green marble is (wait for it) 10%. This isn't a particularly small probability. If there is a single green marble, somewhere in the barrel, the probability of drawing it is asymptotically zero, statistically neglible, less than the chance of winning the lottery, and winning the lottery in one try is far from certain. If the probability that God exists is 1 x 10^{-403} in an infinite, probabilistic Universe, then the probability that God exists is (gasp) 1 x 10^{-403}. This is most definitely not certainty. Certainty isn't the "smallest chance", it is probability 1. It is the largest (possible) chance.
Even 1 x 10^{-403} isn't in the same ballpark as "the smallest chance", by the way. It is enormous compared to the probability that all of the air molecules in the room I'm in will suddenly (by pure chance) happen to bounce in just the right way to form a big blob of liquid air in the middle of the room and leave me gasping in a vacuum as air molecules outside of the house by strange chance miss all of the myriad pathways into the room. Which in turn is unbelievably, awesomely hugely enormous compared to the probability that the infinite, probabilistic Universe is in fact determined and known at the subatomic level by a perfectly organized, uncreated, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent superbeing that created it all by pure magic from nothing.
Oh, wait -- that's a contradiction, isn't it! If the Universe is infinite and probabilistic, then it can't be infinite and deterministic and hence known by an omniscient, omnipotent being, because there is nothing less probabilistic than something that is completely determined by an all powerful, all-knowing being. So your premises directly contradict your conclusion, in addition to demonstrating nothing more than the simple fact that you have absolutely no clue about probability distributions on continuous spaces.
Ego aside, you might want to contemplate learning something about probability and reason itself before you argue in favor of something empirically, logically, and statistically indefensible. God (as a concept) is all three.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
We need to work together to manipulate all search results to lead to whichever xkcd is most relevant to the topic.
DuckDuckGo gave its top result to a fruitcake link saying "Genesis can explain everything...."
Phil Collins or Sega?
If you have an infinite barrel of marbles, you can't make a statement such as "10% of them are green".
You absolutely can. Let me give a simple example: the positive integers. That is, unquestionably, an infinite set. And it also is quite clear that precisely 10% of them are divisible by 10.
Mathematically, here's how we would describe it. Consider the set of integers from 1 to N. Let x(N) be the fraction of members in that set that are divisible by 10. It's quite easy to show that as N->infinity, x(N)->1/10.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."