I came across a site recently which aligns itself with Christian fundamentalism. Question Evolution! bills itself as a "skeptic" of the (widely-accepted) scientific theory of evolution. As you might guess, its self-appointment as a skeptic is an attempt to appear objective when their campaign against evolution as a whole is clearly motivated by religious reasons and fueled by a powerful cocktail of fear and ignorance. I normally don't link to intellectually bankrupt publications so as to not insult the reader's intelligence. But this fundamentalist campaign can consider it free advertising with what weak pull my blog has.

The blog is an independent offshoot of the broader "Question Evolution" campaign strong-armed by a hilariously inept fundamentalist Christian organization known as Christian Ministries International. It places at the forefront of its efforts a brochure containing 15 "questions" which they falsely proclaim "evolutionists" cannot answer. There is a grain of truth to that statement. More than a few of the questions in the brochure cannot be answered because they misrepresent what the theory addresses or are rooted in religious 'skepticism'. Others still have been adequately answered by evolution but are rejected because of conflict with Christian dogma. In short, to the sane observer, it's hard to see the campaign as any more than as a (poorly orchestrated) propaganda effort.

And it would be apt to think of it as such. In a blog post proclaiming to "inoculate" youth against what it derisively calls "Dawinism", it sets out a plan to "reach out to the young" or translated from new-speak, inculcate them into their deranged world-view with propaganda (emphasis mine):

King Solomon declared: 'Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.' (Proverbs 22:6 NASB). What do the social sciences say about this matter? Research indicates that people often side with the argument they hear first concerning a particular ideology. [...] It [sic] vital that people hear the biblical creation message and its supporting evidence first.

The basic plan is to "reach the children first" (that sounds suspicious by itself) presumably so these same youth will be inclined to weigh Biblical creationism more heavily when considering arguments which contradict it in some way. That would seem like a first-rate scheme, except that cognitive bias doesn't exactly work that way. There are several factors which determine how a person selects evidence or is swayed to adopt an opposing view, which includes but is not limited to intelligence, education level, ability to think critically (related to but not the same as intelligence), and the cultural values the observer in question may hold which can override the cognitive bias or lean in favor of it. Unless we suspend the scenario within a context-absent vacuum, the plan would not unfold as intended. Let alone the funding you would require and the commitees you would need to sit on to even obtain a remote chance to propagandize on any effective scale.

Thankfully, the observer does not have to think of this as a serious threat. The blog continues to proclaim that global atheism is in a "decline". What did they use to measure this supposed decline? Google Trends. It can't get much more detached from reality than when you use Google Trends to gauge the health of a given movement. The methodology behind the analysis is never revealed or expanded upon. It correlates a decline in search results with declining interest in said same. Further, it never clarifies exactly what the interest is oriented towards. If I look up "how to kill someone and hide the body", does that mean I'm planning on committing a murder, or am I trying to solicit inspiration for a fictional piece of work? A simple look-up on Amazon book sales for Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion when first released would clearly indicate that the flames of interest in atheism (in one way or another) are continuously being fanned.

At the time of writing, when the term "Islam" is plugged into Google, the search engine returns 571,000,000 results. When "Christianity" is plugged in, it returns a mere 25,100,000. Therefore, we can conclude that there are 22.74 times the adherents to Islam than there are to Christianity. This of course is false, as Christianity is the largest religion on earth with 2.2 billion followers, with Islam trailing closely behind (considering the former's size) with 1.6 billion followers, and is also one of the world's fastest growing religions. This example discredits even the slightest grain of truth their 'analysis' of declining atheistic trends might even possess.

In short, there is nothing to fear from this radical fringe-group. I'm much more concerned over the religious nuts who have been elected to Congress and our Canadian government respectively, who have real chances to influence legislation effectively, than one which boasts a couple hundred branches spanning the globe but merely preaches to the choir. For all its fluff, the campaign still serves as an interesting exercise in propaganda.