Talk:John Polkinghorne

message: How come every scrap of slanderous and hateful nonsense is quickly pounced on by Wikipedia, but when it comes to the Cult of Dawkins and his followers they ignore it?  User: Michael Johnson I ask you politely to stop leave slanderous libel on articles that are religious in nature. I don’t want to attack your character, but am curious as to why you are so insistent upon vandalizing Christian websites. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JWrightGlasgow (talk • contribs) 16:04, 21 November 2006  (UTC)
:Setting aside the strange unsigned comments above (a clear breach of WP:NPA) about articles that are "religious in nature" (it isn't - it's a Wikipedia article and should adhere to WP:NPOV), the suggestion that this is a "Christian website"  (it isn't), and the ridiculous notion of a "cult of Dawkins" (there is no such thing), I'd just like to support User:Michael Johnson and comment that Richard Dawkins' reaction to Polkinghorne is interesting and informative, and should be included. Apart from anything else, it compliments Polkinghorne! Snalwibma 18:10, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I certainly did not vandalise anything. This is a biographical article and I simply added a comment by another notable person, one who's career parallels Polkinghorne. and with whom Polkinghorne interacts, at least in the form of books. I find your comments quite ridiculous. With respect, perhaps you should gain some more experience in editing Wikipedia before making this sort of edit. --Michael Johnson 23:26, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  User: Michael Johnson

message: Tricky to get an FRS and a KBE and be President of a leading Cambridge College without any impact on the wide world or contact with it.  Can you think of any other examples?? :-) He was one of the better physicists of his generation (even Steven Weinberg rates him despite their radically different religious views) and he's arguably the world's leading writer on science and religion, as well as making significant contributions to medical ethics.  He gives invited lectures all over the world etc.. etc..  What more do you want? NBeale 21:48, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is an old saying that no-one achieves anything worthwhile in this world without making enemies. Where is the critisism? From either side? Even Mother Teresa had her critics. -- Michael Johnson 01:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Impact on "Real World"

message: Using waybackmachine  I see not much on that site and right nothing at all. Has the URL moved ?. Has this Wikipedia page taken over ?. What the heck is that bear doing with that tree ? I vote we drop it as broken. Ttiotsw 07:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No idea why it's down - seems to be a tech glitch. I've chased the provier and moved the link to the URL redirect. The Q&A page is updated more often. NBeale 10:06, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Official web site down and out. Cull ? 

message: This entire article lacks secondary sources. All but one of the sources are Polkinghorne's books, the interpretation of which constitutes original research. Editors need to bring secondary sources to support the article. --Michael Johnson 11:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but I've seen much worse. Secondary sources would be much appreciated, in particular, following a more general source that outlines his religious position instead of concocting it ourselves would help giving equal weight to all aspects of Polkinghorne's philosophy, not just those we understand or like the most. However, I'm not particularly worried, so I'm going to trust NBeale that he is only mainly making descriptive claims, and most importantly, doesn't misrepresent Polkinghorne. Also, while reasonable criticism is much welcome, as you said "even mother Theresa had her critics", it's not a serious NPOV or BLP violations that criticism isn't yet included. In short, I don't see this article as being harmful to Wikipedia.  --Merzul 12:28, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I should clarify, I think it is very serious NPOV violation to create an article on some topic and only present one side of it, but I don't think it is a serious problem to create a biography and only present the positive side. This is my personal view that respect overrides neutrality concerns, and that on articles about fellow humans we can be extra nice to them. This applies equally to Richard Dawkins, of course. ;) --Merzul 12:34, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think you violate policy as WP:LIVING really applies so if it's slightly contentious unless it's really really (ed. enough 'really's, really) well sourced it's usually out. Of course once they die then any old rumour goes as long as you can get some notable hack or hackette to quote it. Ttiotsw 21:06, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Ok, I agree. Regarding criticism, it's not that his ideas aren't discussed, I looked at some journal articles with titles like "a response to Polkinghorne", but these are not stuff I'm very capable of writing about. --Merzul 19:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No it's not OR to describe people's ideas refed to their books! There is one big books about him in German, which I have now refed.  There is lots of other secondary material (127k ghits) not time to go through it all. NBeale 14:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research 

message: This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 09:56, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: On the para stating that Polkinghorne suggest there is a consensus amongst physicists of either fine-tuning or multiverse, someone added "Others, such as Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion and Paul Davies in The Goldilocks Enigma, suggest that there is no such consensus and that there are several other possibilities." I've removed this because:
# It's un-refed
# Dawkins is not a physicist
# I haven't read TGE but as I understand it it doesn't disagree with the fine-tuning/multiverse dilemma at all.
# We don't include the views of Y and Z in an article about X unless they are specifically commenting on X. NBeale (talk) 15:59, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consensus amongst physicists 

message: This section would benefit from a rewrite. In parts it's a little bit of a POV quote farm; other parts take up a lot of space without really saying much. An example of the latter, which includes a lot of POV language, though perhaps not Polkinghorne's:
He suggests that there is a relationship between the ways in which science and theology pursue truth within the proper domains of their interpreted experience and drawing on his experience of the development of Quantum physics suggests that, in both disciplines, there are five points of cousinly relationship between these two great human struggles with the surprising and counterintuitive character of our encounter with reality:
# Moments of enforced radical revision
# A period of unresolved confusion
# New synthesis and understanding
# Continued wrestling with unresolved problems
# Deeper implications
The above arguably describes what anyone does in trying to solve any problem. I've copy edited it down to: "He argues that there are five points of comparison between the ways in which science and theology pursue truth: moments of enforced radical revision, a period of unresolved confusion, new synthesis and understanding, continued wrestling with unresolved problems, deeper implications." But that's just a shorter way of saying very little.
I think this whole section could use a rethink.  I don't mind giving it a go, but it'll be a longer term project because I'll have to get hold of the books. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 18:13, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Ideas/philosophy section

message: There's something incongruous in that we have separated his career into Physics and Priesthood, but the Physics section starts off with "He joined the Christian Union while at Cambridge and met his future wife, Ruth Martin, another member of the Union...." It suggests that the whole thing has been written from the perspective of Polkinghorne the priest. HiLo48 (talk) 10:25, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the biography part of the article has just been sliced rather arbitrarily into sections whose contents are not well-described by their section-headings.  A bit of a rewrite/reorganisation should tidy things up nicely.  In passing, it would be great if someone could add some more about Polkinghorne's non-supernatural interests (or former-interests).  He was made an FRS off the back of them, but the scientific content of his 25 year physics career is more or less compressed here into a single sentence.  I'd do it myself if I was au fait with his field.  Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 12:37, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Physics subsection talking about religion 

message: The British philosopher Simon Blackburn has criticized Polkinghorne for primitive thinking, and for using rhetorical devices instead of engaging in philosophy. Thus when Polkinghorne argues that the minute adjustments of cosmological constants on which life on earth depends begs for an explanation that goes "beyond the scientific", Blackburn argues that this relies on a natural preference for explanation in terms of agency, and necessitates what Blackburn calls truly spectacular leaps of understanding about the mind of a designer that requires no birth, nurture, language, culture, or physicality. Blackburn's position is that, in order to develop, science had to move beyond this kind of primitive thinking. He writes that he finished Polkinghorne's books, with their "supreme contempt for philosophical reasoning and historical thinking," in despair at humanity's capacity for self-deception.[31] Against this, Freeman J. Dyson called Polkinghorne's arguments on theology and natural science "polished and logically coherent."
I think this paragraph might be too long and detailed on Blackburn's position. I propose the following, shorter version: 
The British philosopher Simon Backburn has criticized Polkinghorne for using primitive thinking and rhetorical devices instead of engaging in philosophy. When Polkinghore argues that the minute adjustments of cosmological constants for life points towards an explanation beyond the scientific realm, Blackburn argues that this relies on a natural preference for explanation in terms of agency. Blackburn writes that he finished Polkinghorne's books in "despair at humanity's capacity for self-deception".[31] Against this, Freeman J. Dyson has called Polkinghorne's arguments on theology and natural science "polished and logically coherent."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by CarlosMarti123 (talk • contribs) 04:24, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simon Blackburn in Critical Reception Section 

message: I have to declare an interest because I'm a collaborator of Polkinghorne and co-author of Questions of Truth. But Grayling didn't "argue" that Polkinghorne "exploited his fellowship"but merely asserted it and in fact he was as wrong about this as he was about the book being self-published (FWIW the publisher had been established longer than the University at which Grayling was a professor) since it was I who arranged the venue and not Polkinghorne). Since there is no reliable source I won't press the point, but we don't say "argue" unless someone produces a reasonable argument.  NBeale (talk) 18:35, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Grayling's remarks about "illiterate goatherds" seem to refer to the Old Testament. If they were illiterate, how did they write?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.246.172 (talk) 11:58, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grayling "suggesting" not "arguing"  

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on John Polkinghorne. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.templeton.org/humble_approach_initiative/Pneumatology/participants/polking.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20111226064633/http://www.prrg.org/p/prrg-staff.html to http://www.prrg.org/p/prrg-staff.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070929123714/http://www.powells.com/review/2002_08_01.html to http://www.powells.com/review/2002_08_01.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110725014932/http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000223/article.pdf to http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000223/article.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 17:42, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on John Polkinghorne. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110607140449/http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Polkinghorne.html to http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Polkinghorne.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080828211048/http://www.issr.org.uk/presidents.asp to http://www.issr.org.uk/presidents.asp
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070930210949/http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~cpro/event/06Act.11-e.pdf to http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~cpro/event/06Act.11-e.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 16:51, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The section headed "Ideas" says that Polkinghorne said in an interview "that he believes his move from science to religion has given him binocular vision." Since he died in 2021, should "believes" be replaced with "believed" now? There are other places in this section of the article that use that present tense, too. I am open to suggestions about what tense should be used. Rollo August (talk) 20:51, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Question about past tense and present tense