Tim (having followed some of yesterday’s link-love) notes that he googled the question “Is Conservapedia supposed to be satire?” I had wondered the same thing the first time I discovered it back in the days of my metacatholic existence.
Tim didn’t tell us what results his search returned, so I googled the phrase myself. Fascinatingly these were the top three hits.
- A debate on Conservapedia – “How can we protect Conservapedia by distinguishing real conservative encyclopedia articles from satires written by liberals?”
- The second was Conservapedia’s definition of satire: “A satire is an artistic work used to criticize human error and vices by using humor and sarcasm. Parody is a popular sub-form of satire.”
- The third was an attack: “Conservapedia is so bloody awful it almost defies satire. I mean how can you make up anything more ridiculous than sentences like this: ‘Obama has declared himself to be a Christian, yet never replaced his Muslim name with a Christian one as many do, casting doubt on his politically self-serving claim.’ Oh my God goodness gracious me, he didn’t change his name! To conceal his Muslim origins! And therefore he’s politically self serving! Much more than if he had tried to conceal his Muslim origins by changing his name!
I would like to believe that it is a brilliant liberal satire. I fear however that it is not, even if some individual pages are.
But what does it say about some forms of conservative Christianity that neither conservatives nor liberals can work out whether pages purporting to present a conservative view are authoritative encyclopedia entries, or sharp liberal parodies of those conservative positions.
I remember a conversation from the days when I was young and innocent, and was listening in to an argument a fellow diner was having with a creationist who was reading science at Cambridge. (I know! Science! At Cambridge! Mind you, I think he changed to engineering later.) I quickly found that common sense, reason and exegesis were getting my friend nowhere, so I resorted to satire.
Adopting a serious tone of voice I said: “The thing is, the fossil record is a deliberate lie. God allowed Satan to run round burying fossils everywhere. Just like the Bible tells us that the Devil’s first question is “Did God really say?” to test our faithfulness to his word. Just like that test, the Devil was allowed to test us with fossils and dinosaur skeletons and vestigial appendices and things like that, so that we would have to either sin by believing evolution, or stay faithful by trusting that the BIble was what God really did say.”
Needless to say, while I thought this was a palpably ludicrous mockery of creationism, he leapt on it as one of the best arguments he’d ever heard to back up his belief. At that point I realised. Some conservatism is simply beyond satire. It is impossible to tell the difference between what they believe, and what is simply unbelievable.
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