Let me make sure that you hear me out on this: “Religious” search engines that seek to filter out offensive content (like pornography) for the end user is a good thing if the end user is struggling with that. I’m for staying on the “safe” side of things if it’s needed.
But, search engines which unashamedly promote only one perspective by filtering out helpful and varying interpretations is an unhealthy idea, like this:
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.
In this example I think it’s a good and right thing to present arguments for gay marriage so that we can have a more complete picture of the world that surrounds us and the people that inhabit it, right?
What are your thoughts? Read the full NPR article here.
Wow, that is really awful
Censoring viewpoints does seem a bit wrong at first. On the other hand, I could see how such search engines would be quite useful if you’re searching for a certain perspective. Sometimes the non-Christian perspective on an issue is so prevalent that it’s almost impossible to find a Christian perspective through a normal search engine. While ignoring opposing viewpoints is never a good idea, I could see how a religious search engine would be beneficial to actually make a Christian point of view easier to find.
Agreed. Terrible idea.
What’s interesting is that the one site mentioned – SeekFind – doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the Log Cabin Republicans (a gay and lesbian advocacy group). The first result on a search is an article explaining the problem with both the Democrat and Republican parties.
Chris,
Can you give an example of a Christian point of view that might be hard to find in the age of Google?
It’s not that you can’t find Christian perspectives via google, it’s just that you have to sift through all the other perspectives to find what you’re looking for sometimes. A search engine such as this may do the sifting for you ahead of time. I’m not saying they’re the next best thing, I was merely theorizing a possible scenario in which it might be useful. I’m certainly not abandoning google for these other search engines, although I may for different reasons…
I wrote about this a couple months back and consider them to be modern-day pharisees.
http://hackingchristianity.net/2010/09/religious-search-engine-echo-chambers.html
To play the opposite side of this argument.
How is using a general search engine like Google, specifically enabling us in concrete terms to engage the world for Christ? While we might be exposed to additional ideas, which can be helpful, how many of us are actually looking for a completely balanced and all inclusive understanding of a subject when we hit Google?
Furthermore isn’t the engagement, that we are actually looking for behind the scenes of the conversation, going to come from relationships built out of some type of social community either virtual (online) or real (physical face-to-face)? The entire Internet is not that type of community any more than everyone in a city knows each other. If you are choosing to avoid connecting with certain people by using a specific search engine (or a specific map of the Internet), its not likely that you will engage them because of or in spite of the use of any particular search engine.