Conservatives Think Reality Has Liberal Bias. No, Seriously!

Like a Stephen Colbert comedy skit, Republicans have decided that reality has a Liberal bias! I hoped this was parody, but apparently not...

Conservapedia: E=mc² Is A Liberal Conspiracy
by Megan Carpentier | August 9, 2010 from Talking Points Memo

Andy Schlafly and Albert Einstein

To many conservatives, almost everything is a secret liberal plot: from fluoride in the water to medicare reimbursements for end-of-life planning with your doctor to efforts to teach evolution in schools. But Conservapedia founder and Eagle Forum University instructor Andy Schlafly -- Phyllis Schlafly's son -- has found one more liberal plot: the theory of relativity.
If you're behind on your physics, the Theory of Relativity was Albert Einstein's formulation in the early 20th century that gave rise to the famous theorum that E=mc², otherwise stated as energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light. Why does Andy Schlafly hate the theory of relativity? We're pretty sure it's because he's decided it doesn't square with the Bible.

In the entry, "Counterexamples to Relativity," the authors (including Schlafly) write:

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.^[1]

To what does that reference lead? Why, a note by Schlafly:

See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson's book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold

In other words, reading a theory about physics is correlated to a decrease in people's interest in reading the Bible, which means that it causes people to stop reading the Bible.
Schlafly also points to the Bible as a reason that Einstein's theory must be wrong:

9. The action-at-a-distance by Jesus, described in John 4:46-54.

Conservapedia defines "action-at-a-distance" as "Action at a distance consists of affecting a distant body instantaneously. At the atom level, this is known as "non-locality." In non-confusing terms, that indicates the ability to cause something to happen instantaneously in another location (i.e., faster than the speed of light). Since Jesus could, reportedly, do this, thus Einstein is wrong. Schlafly's evidence is John 4:46-54, in which Jesus reportedly cured someone's son just by saying it had happened.

Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum.
When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

"Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe."

The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live."The man took Jesus at his word and departed.

While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living.

When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour."

Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.

This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee.

Schlafly brags on Conservapedia that he has homeschooled 185 children, all of whom do exceptionally well on standardized tests.

As with Wikipedia and other online crowd-sourced resources, Conservapedia is a colloborative effort of its users and any registered user can post to the site. Schlafly is a frequent contributor to the site, and is identified as the initial author of the entry and well as the editor of the note identified above. Schlafly did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Related, from Paul Krugman's blog...

First They Came For The Climate Scientists
By Paul KrugmanPublished August 10, 2010 on Paul Krugman's blog on the New York Times

Everyone knows that the American right has problems with science that yields conclusions it doesn’t like. Climate science — which says that we face a huge global externality that requires not just government intervention, but coordinated international action (black helicopters!) has been the target of a sustained, and unfortunately largely successful, attempt to damage its credibility.

But it doesn’t stop there. We should not forget that much of the right is deeply hostile to the theory of evolution.

And now there’s a new one (to me, anyway; maybe it’s been out there all along): it turns out that, according to Conservapedia, the theory of relativity is a liberal plot.

Update: Tom Tomorrow emails me to tell me about today’s comic.

Related, from the Rachel Maddow show:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sean