The Atheist Blogger wrote a piece today in which he found several flaws with FreeThoughtPedia’s entry on Atheism. I had never heard of FreeThoughtPedia before reading his post, so I decided to check them out. According to their about page, this is what FreeThoughtPedia is:

FreeThoughtPedia is a central repository of philosophical, scientific, scriptural, and historical arguments and commentary on the Freethought movement. Our goal is to provide a resource for those who choose to attribute greater significance to what’s rational and logical, as opposed to irrational, superstitious, mythological and unproven.

On the surface there is nothing wrong with this. However, at the same time, FreeThoughtPedia in its very name is advertising itself as an “encyclopedia” of sorts. In my view, an encyclopedia is a neutral repository of knowledge. That is a goal that Wikipedia strives to maintain. Many, especially in the atheist community, have criticized what is essentially the opposite of FreeThoughtPedia – Conservapedia – for presenting extremely biased or one-sided editorials and providing poor or misguided explanations. Especially their entry on Atheism. As the Atheist Blogger revealed, FreeThoughtPedia may be in danger of heading in that direction as well.

Personally, I think that the idea of a point of view encyclopedia is just a bad idea – whether it is maintained by believers or non-believers. Encyclopedias need to stick to the facts and not editorialize. In principle this could be accomplished by either Conservapedia or FreeThoughtPedia – and I hope it does. But for now, I don’t think I will be using either one.

What do you think? Is a FreeThought Encyclopedia a good idea? Would you rely on it?