Religious Search Engines Yield Tailored Results

[Newsjock]

Source: NPR

In a world where Google has put every bit of information at our fingertips, some people are now demanding less information when they surf the Internet.

Some Jews, Muslims and Christians are abandoning Yahoo and Google and turning to search engines with results that meet their religious standards.

Shea Houdmann runs SeekFind, a Colorado Springs-based Christian search engine that only returns results from websites that are consistent with the Bible. He says SeekFind is designed "to promote what we believe to be biblical truth" and excludes sites that don't meet that standard.

Houdmann says a search on his site would not turn up pornography. If you search “gay marriage,” you would get results that argue against gay marriage. And if you type in “Democratic Party,” your first search result is a site on Marxism.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129709336

[Ezlivin]

1. Where religion cannot change the culture, it spawns its own subculture

Religious bookstores, religious broadcasting, religious Wikis, religious schools, religious music.

If they had the power they would make this entire country into a religious version of their ecclesiastical wet dream.

[el_bryanto]

4. It's not just religion, it's any ideology

There are people participating at this board here who live in their own little bubbles of their own creation; I could well be one of them.

Bryant

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. So is SeekFind also censoring all the dicey stuff in the Bible? Or just current stuff?

[OrangeGrapes]

11. I searched 'Democratic Party'

and it gave me results for 'nuclear power'. But only 207 results had both 'nuclear' and 'power'. the other 8600 had only 'power' And, of course, those 8600 were like 'the power of prayer' and 'how can we rely on the power of God?'

[sharp_stick]

14. Really?

Damn that's a useless search tool, just what every fundie needs.

[sharp_stick]

3. Yet another reason among many

to hate religion and what it's zealots do, or want to do to the sane among us.

I'm not always a fan of building walls but if I were to put one up it would go right the hell around Colorado Springs.

[mjane]

5. There are plenty of people here who will only watch certain media

because they believe only that media has "the truth", etc. I don't see this as any different. How many times do we read posts like "I only watch (insert Daily show here or whatever) for news" etc.

Many people on both sides of the spectrum limit themselves to media that reconfirms their beliefs and doesn't challenge them, regardless of whether they are religious.

I've always believed that regardless of one's ideology, and especially if one is going to read very biased stuff (mother jones, national review, etc.) that one should read stuff from both sides of the aisle. Nobody's belief system should be so fragile that they suffer dangerous spikes in blood pressure from reading stuff they disagree with.

[cleanhippie]

8. Not the same thing at all

Getting news from a biased source is not the same as getting answers to life that filter out the facts, data and evidence that directly contradicts the bible. Thats called willful ignorance.

[mjane]

12. they are both willful ignorance

if you only get your news and your news opinion from leftwing or rightwing sources, you are being willfully ignorant.

people who don't read rightwing or leftwing media/opinion because it conflicts with their belief system are no different, in essence, than those who do so vis a vis the bible.

it's the exact same syndrome.

[sharp_stick]

13. I find a difference in hunting for it and being fed it

In your example, which I agree with, people are attracted to views that they agree with and look for it, at least in part to rationalize their worldview.

Search algorithims like this abomination are set up to feed the sheep exactly what this asshole wants them to eat. This scumbag and his Colorado Springs bosses at Focus on the Family will not allow the sheep to hunt for anything they will give them what they want them to have. The exact same shit happens with crap like the "conservapedia" there is no chance at an honest discussion with "conservapedia" because you will not be able to discuss with the whackjob fundies that run the shithole that Marxism and the Democratic Party are not the same thing because "insert 50,000 reasons".

Now if you want, for some reason, to limit your searches to whacked out shit like that produced here that's one thing but if that's the only search tool your given that's quite another. I'd like to know how many fundie churches and "outreach" organizations only offer access to this "search tool"?

[mjane]

17. i'm not saying

"it's exactly the same"

i am saying it's similar. it's the same syndrome. clearly, what this is is a BIT different from simply self selecting only leftwing sources, leftwing friends (the pauline kael syndrome) etc.

the reality is though, that ideologues whether of the left or right can be pretty successful in getting minimum to almost no exposure to competing ideas that's essentially the functional equivalent of this search engine.

how many on the left ever read National Review? American Spectator? let alone a libertarian rag like Reason (that amply skews the left AND the right)?

how many on the right read The Nation? Mother Jones?

heck, i've even read tons of posts here from people who exalt in how they "defriended" somebody on facebook because god forbid they have a different political opinion, etc.

if you surround yourself with like thinkers and belief supporting media, you are doing the same thing as these people in this original post are doing, maybe to a different degree, but the result is largely the same.

[MineralMan]

6. Actually, that one yields absolutely useless results.

I tested it yesterday with several searches. It's totally useless in finding any information at all.

[cleanhippie]

7. More tools for the willfully ignorant to be more willfully ignorant.

Thats just what we need more of!!!

[Bitwit1234]

9. OH boy you people don't think google sometimes screws

around with the tailored results. I have seen plenty of results where they don't come up with some of the real answers because they put the republican way first.

[cleanhippie]

10. Like what?

Examples, proof?

[Brother Buzz]

15. Rick Santorum endorses this product

It scrubs his sullied name squeaky clean. :rofl:

[pangaia]

16. hackers at work

I just looked at SEEK FIND.. and this is what I found...

"Sadly, due to hackers attempting to manipulate our search results, we have had to temporarily deactivate the SeekFind search engine. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience."

HA HA!!!