Talk:Christianity/Archive 21

message: KV, it would be helpful to go ahead and name the policies. While I think KV's version is somewhere between misleading and inaccurate, KV is right to ask for a citation or three to the contrary. It won't be hard to find, but it needs to be added before the whole thing is fixed. However, it would also help to clarify that by "one creed" we mean a general "shared set of beliefs" rather than a specific creed with a specific text, like the Nicene or Apostles' Creed. 
KV wrote above, For example, there was a shared creed that Jesus had come, taught, was crucified, buried, and raised again.  However, some people like the Arians thought that Jesus was fully mortal and not at all divine.  Others like the Gnostics preferred other gospels than the proto-Catholics.  Some believed that Judas betrayed Jesus, others that Jesus asked Judas to turn him in.  Some believed that Mary Magdeleine was Jesus' wife and closest apostle, whereas most didn't believe her an apostle at all, and Jesus celibate.  All of this without disagreeing with the basic creed described above.  I suggest we use the scholars in this area, and not your own personal opinion. KV
These gnostics do not all agree that Jesus "came, taught, was crucified, buried, and raised again." The Arians thought that Jesus was a highly exalted being created near the beginning of time by God, but not God himself. Regarding those who believed that Jesus asked Judas to turn him in, the Gospel of Judas doesn't record any events after Jesus' arrest. It earlier suggests that Jesus needed to die on the Cross to be free of his physical body, so it's unlikely that this group would have believed in a bodily resurrection, as that would have been a reimprisonment to them. The same is true of many of the gnostics; they would have supported perhaps a spiritual resurrection, but not a physical one. Suggesting the resurrection was only spiritual, was the gnostics' attempt to adapt Christianity and make it more palatable to their listeners. Most Christians did and do include Mary Magdalene as an apostle, calling her and the other first witnesses to the resurrection the "apostles to the apostles." As Str said, belief that she was Jesus' wife or lover is a very modern idea not found in antiquity, despite Gnostic accounts of her having received other "secret teachings." This is pretty basic stuff. I'll try to get sources soon, if no one beats me to it. Wesley 16:48, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  one creed? 

message: Giovanni33, re your change: "Christianity began within the Jewish religion among those who claimed to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth".  Is there any basis for doubt in this regard?  It sounds scare-quotey and snarky, without adding anything useful.Timothy Usher 18:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, there is doubt. There should always be doubt based on what is known and what is merely thought to be probable. I simply like to state the facts. We don't even know if Jesus was a real historical person, or that those who claimed to be his followers didn't infact invent him--at least invent him in the form that they did, in their stories of him. In anycase, its simply a matter of fact that these people claimed to be followers of this character named Jesus. Its not scary at all. That is what they claimed and its a matter for personal belief to beleive their claims or not. I choose not to believe their claims without evidence. But, Im happy to report what they claimed. I've seen this language in other reference sources. Also, in reverting this edit, you reverted all my other language improvements--twice. This is careless, blind reverts and shows a lack of consideration. Giovanni33 02:55, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

text: "Claimed" is a weasel word. There is not reasonable doubt that Christianity began among Jesus' followers. (This wording even leaves room for those that think that only some of his followers started the thing). There is no reasonable doubt of Jesus' historicity. Repeating the same stuff time and again shows a lack of consideration too. Str1977 (smile back) 14:00, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Those who claimed to be"

message: This page was apparently deleted at some point.  AnnH apparently ended up restoring it.  I'm only stating this since I notice it's not showing up on my watchlist, so people will now know that it has been edited.  Top of your watchlist now...
KV 19:51, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note 

message: Why is there a 'citation needed' tag on the clause stating the term 'Christian' is first used in the New Testament in Acts 11:26? Maybe I'm missing something. The clause links directly to the verse. This verse is the first mention in the New Testament of the term. See here. —Aiden 22:20, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This just came to mind. Do scholars all agree that Acts predates 1 Peter? --Andrew c 22:36, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure, but that's not really at issue. The first place (in book order) you'll find mention of the term Christian is in Acts. I don't see the need for additional sources when we have a link to the verse itself. —Aiden 00:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because the link to the verse itself doesn't show it's the first time it's used in the New Testament. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Citation needed" on first use of 'Christian' clause 

message: Can someone come to a count on Aiden's reverts, it seems in the past 24 hours he's done at least 5 without me counting.  I have to get to bed, so I can't do this right now.
KV 03:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aiden's reverts 

message: If you are missing recent conversations, please check the new /Archive 30. 322kb file size is just rediculous. Hope this doesn't cause problems, but I tried not to touch anything that had been edited within the last week. --Andrew c 18:20, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archiving

message: Do their adherents or their adversaries? I think that is the main question we have to keep going back to. The views of the vast majority of a professed religion will always have more relevance in the article about that religion than those of a vast majority of other religions (or no religions). That's just a simple edict of fairness. It would give undue weight to a view from without a group for it to displace the accepted view within the group. Space should be given for dissent and to represent the debates on the issues, but to push aside the most significant view in favor of others, in the name of fair representation, is a contradiction of terms. It is unfair to the group about which the article is written, to force their view to be filtered through the hostile views of outsiders. Those outside views can be represented, but not given equality with or priority over the view of the group in question, as the view of the group, is, by definition, the most important and relevant one to the article. » MonkeeSage « 00:50, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That isn't how we do things here.  See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.  Jkelly 01:00, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A dictionary is pretty neutral. Claiming Christianity is monotheistic does not state as fact that there is one God nor does it state as fact that the Christian God is one and not three. It only states that Christians believe they serve one God. That's all it takes to be monotheistic. —Aiden 01:28, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm familiar with NPOV, which is why I pointed out the NPOV violation of giving undue weight. What is the most revelant, important POV in an article about some dogmatic group? Quite simply, the view of the group! I wonder how long it would take for me to be flamed into oblivion if I tried to insert the idea that many Christians hold about Islam (viz., that it is a tribal moon-god religion that worships a meteorite) into the intro to the article on Islam? Okay, I'll compromise, we can just say that "mabye" that's what Islam is. Yeah, right. Probably take all of three seconds. And for good reason. The antagonistic bias would be just a blatent in doing that a it is here. » MonkeeSage « 01:29, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The amount of goodwill on this Talk page is somewhat lacking.  In any case, I'd venture a guess that most mainstream accounts of Christianity describe it as monotheitic.  I suggest that we can, and should, go ahead and describe it as such without anything more than a reference to a mainstream text on the subject.  If there is significant disagreement amongst experts, any other view should be mentioned as well, but not in some POV fork.  All of the amateur theology (and rude comments about other religions) above seems to ignore the fact that we don't make our own calls on things based on logic, we write from the majority POV, and summarise notable minority ones.  Jkelly 01:45, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: JKelly: You misread, or missed my original post, I believe. I stated that "Space should be given for dissent and to represent the debates on the issues," then went on to say that, while this is true, "to push aside the most significant view in favor of others, in the name of fair representation, is a contradiction of terms." Undue weight involves matters of placement, emphasis and selection of data. In an article about a group and their beliefs it is only fair that the representative views of the group — especially when they are in universal agreement — be given the most weight. Also, I beg your pardon if I offended you by the crude example I gave — I was not representing my own view of Islam, only using an example of a significant minority view that should NOt be given undue weight over the universal consensus of Muslims in the article about their religion. And I might add that Christians find the accusation of polytheism just as rude as the accusation I mentioned, which probably accounts for much of the lack of good-will on this page. For my part, if I have contributed to that lack, I apologize. But I do stand by my points. » MonkeeSage « 01:58, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I can live with "Christians profess monotheism". But like you, I don't see any difference (except grammatically) between the statement "x professes monotheism" and "x is monotheistic". If we take the root — theism — no one thinks saying "Christianity is a theistic religion" means "God really exists" or "the Christian understanding of God is right" or anything like that; simply "belief in God". I'm not sure why the whole paradigm would change just because we add the adjectival qualifier "mono-". Anyhow, I'm tired and typing badly and rambling, so I'm off to bed! :P » MonkeeSage « 04:31, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Christians profess monotheism" is like saying "Christians believe that they believe there is one God" when "Christians are monotheistic" would be "Christians believe there is only one God." —Aiden 05:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: More specifically, it's like saying, "Christians claim to believe there is one God."Timothy Usher 05:14, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I profess monotheism all the time, and it's far more than just a claim. But, for the sake of NPOV.... Arch O. La Grigory Deepdelver 13:11, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

text: "Claim to believe" suggests a suspicion that the believer harbours beliefs different from his/her claim.  Why not simply say, "Christians believe in one God subsisting in three Persons - a monotheistic belief called "Trinitarianism"? Fishhead64 19:03, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Well said. Al 15:14, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue rests not on the definition of God, but on monotheism--it is the belief that determines whether one is monotheist or not. The definition of monotheism is believing there is only one God while the definition of mother has nothing to do with belief, but with fact. Since Jack believes there is only one God, he is a monotheist by definition. Whether Hasan is right or not is irrelevent. —Aiden 15:25, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems to be a matter more appropriately dealt with in monotheism - is it really reasonable to expect a summary article to delve int competing claims of what constitutes a genuinely monotheistic faith? Fishhead64 19:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who gets to define the basic tenets of religions in articles about them? 

message: Heather says, "I have two mommies." Jack Chick disagrees, and says that Heather only has one mommy and one mommy's lesbian lover. Clearly, Heather and Jack mean different things by the word "mommy"; Jack's definition encompasses only biological mommies (and perhaps heterosexual adoptive mommies) whereas Heather's definition is broader. Nonetheless, it is NPOV to say that Heather claims to have two mommies.
Likewise, Jack Chick (who is a Christian) claims to believe in one God. However, Hasan (who is a Muslim) claims that Jack actually believes in three gods. Hasan's claim with regards to Jack is analogous to Jack's claim with regards to Heather. Hasan and Jack are working with different definitions of "God", just as Jack and Heather use different definitions of "mommy". Nonetheless, it is NPOV to say that Jack professes a belief in one God. --FOo 08:18, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well said. Al 15:14, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue rests not on the definition of God, but on monotheism--it is the belief that determines whether one is monotheist or not. The definition of monotheism is believing there is only one God while the definition of mother has nothing to do with belief, but with fact. Since Jack believes there is only one God, he is a monotheist by definition. Whether Hasan is right or not is irrelevent. —Aiden 15:25, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems to be a matter more appropriately dealt with in monotheism - is it really reasonable to expect a summary article to delve int competing claims of what constitutes a genuinely monotheistic faith? Fishhead64 19:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Analogy 

message: CTSWyneken is obviously right (per policy). The problem is not with the lack of sources; in fact there are so many sources that it's difficult to pinpoint the "most notable" ones for the various views. Time for a linguistic tally of common parlance. (I'll ignore forms like -istic and -ism which does not change the figures significantly). A Google search for  "christianity" yields some 80 million hits, 1 million of which only contain the word "monotheistic", 200,000 both "monotheistic" and "polytheistic", 100,000 only "polytheistic". The latter two, together some 25% of the hits, generally deal with the Moslim criticism. One can safely say that in the US/Western world/Christianity-oriented English language monotheism has become synonymous with come to include the Trinity concept; criticism comes from people with a different concept called Thaweed. It's basically a translation problem. Thaweed does not translate as monotheism because monotheism encompasses the Christian concept (just like the word "god" in English generally calls up images of the God of the Christians). People who visit the English Wikipedia are supposed to speak English and understand the concepts behind the words. This is not to say we should ignore the difference. Like Sophia said, Wikipedia has a clear western-world-centric systemic bias and we should do everything we can to remove that bias. We cannot change the meaning of the word monotheism which includes the Christian concept. We can point out the difference. If this can be done in the lead, great. Otherwise we had better leave the word "monotheism" out of the lead.    
(Statistically, the question whether or not Christianity is monotheistic is not a big deal. Assertions of monotheism only involve 1.25% of the hits; discussion 0.4% or less.)
All the above still needs citations but I'm sure they won't differ significantly. And I think they should not end up in the lead. If only because I am not a native speaker of English and fully aware of the all-important translation aspects here - something is "lost in translation" if we translate "monotheism" into "thaweed" - I can't imagine an authoritative English-Arabic dictionary doing that (especially not if published in a predominantly Islamic country).   
Finally think about consensus and what would happen if Moslim editors were present in proportions mirroring the real world... in that case a compromise (does it exist?) or outright removal of monotheistic from the lead would be mandated by the consensus process.
Sorry if this is rambles a bit, I'm in a hurry... AvB ÷ talk 07:40, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We cannot change the meaning of the word monotheism which includes the Christian concept. Exactly so. And I say again, a "neutral" point of view does not mean a porridge made up of opposing points of view. There is in fact no such thing as a truly neutral point of view: every account is biased one way or another. Wikipedia is essentially biased towards the "western" world view, which thinks that an encyclopedia assembled on the Internet by a lot of individuals working together is potentially a good or useful thing. How do we accommodate the POV that all encyclopedias must be compiled by authorized religious authorities (be they Christian, Muslim, or Hindu), or by representatives of the North Korean government, or the view that all encyclopedias which attempt to systematize knowledge are futile, or Satanic, or merely a tool of the imperialist hegemony? If you are offended by something, or know it to be inaccurate, then alter it: but if you just suspect that someone else might be offended, leave it to them (maybe they won't be); and if you can think of a subtle argument against the accepted wisdom, put it in your blog: don't stick all your half-baked high-school philosophy into the Wikipedia. Myopic Bookworm 09:30, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  First, let me say that I'm not committed to any particular phrasing of anything in the intro or the section on this subject. Because we have a -- lively -- discussion on this issue, I think it's important to apply Wiki's Razor. At the moment, we have one reputable, scholarly source that says point blank that Christianity is monotheistic. We have another that says Christians worship one God. We have a third that discusses the debates over the definition of the Trinity, but on a quick scan through it does not address the issue of monotheism at all. We have several Quranic verses that go at Christians for worshipping Jesus, but do not say flat out that Christians do not believe in one God. (I'm sure there must be some Islamic source that says this point blank, but no one has produced it yet). Since we have a reputable source that specifically calls Christianity monotheistic and none so far that says it is not, we should go with the direct statement as is. If we can find other quotes, then, that is a different kettle of fish, and we can go to something less direct. --CTSWyneken 12:49, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In the previous section, I asked for cites making either argument. I added the Stanford ref. The only takers so far are the ones you mentioned. Arch O. La Grigory Deepdelver 13:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

text: That's right, CTSWyneken.  The only source thusfar for a different definition of monotheism, such that Christianity falls outside it, are editors to this talk page.  Note that we are asking for reputable scholarly sources, not just sectarian presumption.  A Muslim expert on Christianity, for example, would do.  However, I very much doubt that such an expert would claim Christians to be polytheists.Timothy Usher 19:10, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As a point of fact, the two Muslim authors I cite in the next section say precisely that it is not Muslims who make that accusation, but Christian apologists who misunderstand what Muslims are actually saying. I'm not sure if you can call them "experts on Christianity," but one is a former Christian minister who converted to Islam. Arch O. La Grigory Deepdelver 19:16, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Missing the point (cont'd)