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.
One of many current examples of the virtually limitless capacity of humans to self-inflict crippling limitations on the power of the human mind. Faith found in a universe full of contradictions and irrelevancies is likely to be more profound and stable than faith found in a controlled environment where other humans drastically limit the subjects of inquiry. This tendency to try to screen out huge swatches of information is, I think, largely just mental laziness. Is this how God, who gave us these amazing capacities for learning and analysis, wants us to use our gifts and talents?
There are literally hundreds of different search engines on the web–with Google being perhaps the most famous. Each engine sorts the web from a slightly different angle whether its pursuant to location, money, business, academia, sociology, or religion. Although NPR only listed one each for the three religions mentioned, a quick “google search” for Christian search engines, Muslim search engines, and Jewish search engines will find a whole list for each.
Here’s my point: knowing that there is a wide variety of search engines, means that I can select a particular engine to match the particular search that I need to do. This is particularly helpful on a largely contested issue: for example compare a search of Middle East Peace Talks from Google and Yahoo on one hand, and from a couple of Muslim sites on the other hand! Much of the information is the same, yet it shows two different perspectives and can increase the understanding of both points of view.