Ridvan Aydemir, better known by his screen name "Apostate Prophet", or simply "AP", is certainly one of the more reasonable atheists. As an ex-Muslim, he primarily focuses on refuting Islam, hence his name. However, on occasion, and especially when he collaborates with ex-atheist David Wood, he does address other topics.
On July 24th 2023, he did just that, as the two presented a live stream reacting to a Joe Rogan interview. The guest: Stephen C. Meyer. The topic: Intelligent design. During the stream, David read out the Wikipedia entry on Meyer, which says "He is an advocate of the pseudoscience of intelligent design and helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the main organization behind the intelligent design movement." (1).
As Wood continued speaking, AP pulled up the page and read it for himself. He seemed surprised, and called the entry weird. "That sounds a little argumentative and biased...", he said, going on to say that it doesn't seem objective at all.
And he's absolutely right. In spite of Wikipedia's "NPOV" policy, which in a nutshell states "Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias" (2), this is such a clear example of editorial bias. Even an atheist like Apostate Prophet, who obviously does not believe in Intelligent Design, recognises that a side has, indeed, been taken. His side, at that.
On its own, this is not a problem. Of course, there's the problem of it being factually wrong, and there's the moral issue of it being blasphemous to deny God's hand in creation, but overall, it is to be expected that an unbeliever will call Intelligent Design pseudoscientific. Indeed, if such statements were found on Talk Origins, or some other explicitly biased source, I wouldn't even blink. And of course, it would be stating the obvious that Bible Brain is also a biased source. The issue here isn't bias, but that Wikipedia insists it is a neutral source, presenting only the facts.
According to its own project page, "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." This could not be much clearer: Wikipedia is supposed to be a neutral, reliable source. And indeed, it is quite heavily relied upon, even being the top result of many Google searches. It is generally the go-to source for any topic, up to and including religion. It is common practice to cite, link to, or even flat out plagiarise it in debate.
Wikipedia, then, is a very relied upon source, but AP's response shows it is an obviously unreliable source (and not just because anyone with an internet connection can vandalise the site). To illustrate this, let's take Wood's suggestion and edit Meyer's entry to be more neutral:
"Stephen C. Meyer (/ˈmaɪ.ər/; born 1958) is an American author and former educator. He is an advocate of intelligent design, which some say is pseudoscientific. (Citation needed.) He helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the main organization behind the intelligent design movement."
Notice, the suggested edit is nearly identical, but is neutral. It doesn't comment on how true Meyer's opinion is, it merely states that he holds it, and that some disagree. I added room for citation, allowing links to any source that disputes the validity of Intelligent Design. This is so unbelievably simple that any high school student can do it, and indeed, are expected to.
Though it claims to be neutral, even having an explicit policy of neutrality, Wikipedia is a very biased website. Its general reliability is highly questionable, but its bias cannot be reasonably denied. There are only two honest solutions. Wikipedia may either enforce its NPOV policy and prevent bias against Intelligent Design, or change its NPOV policy, admitting its biases. Equally important is for us to recognise our biases. Neutrality sounds nice, but is technically impossible. If you hold an opinion, you hold a bias towards it. The question is, which bias is better to hold?
Obviously, I'm biased, but I contend the best bias to hold is a bias towards our intelligent Designer. There are a number of reasons to believe there is a God, and a great many reasons to believe He is specifically the Triune God of the Bible. Chief among these is the argument from reason, which shows us that actually, God is a necessary axiom. But such discussions would be beyond the scope of this article.
References
1. Wikipedia, Stephen C. Meyer (link)
2. Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view (link)