Talk:God/Archive 13

message: Note: This article has a very small number of in-line citations for an article of its size and currently would not pass criteria 2b.
Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 22:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  GA Re-Review and In-line citations 

message: If Zeus, Odin, and some other deities are listed in this Wikipedia as fictional kings, mythological charcters and are generally reviewed as being just mithycal and imaginary in nature, so it must be applied to the article concernig God, since he's in just the same level.
:God's status as fictional or real is pretty clearly disputed, and the article does a good job of explaining that. -- Beland 23:38, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "believed by monotheists..."; "believed to be the creator..."; "The last few hundred years of philosophy have seen sustained attacks on the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments for God's existence. "; How are these stating the existence of God? DJ Clayworth 15:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: or, indeed, whether there isn't a God or gods! Slackbuie 17:02, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mythological and fictional considerations 

message: From a Pretestant Christian point of view I thought that any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above shall not be made, ("You shall not make for yourself any graven image") althogh Wikipedia should remain unbiased, and I respect that, but should it not be taken in to consideration of the Second Commandment?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.47.144.139 (talk • contribs) 15:01, 26 October 2006.
:Wikipedia is not a Protestant project. To remove the images solely because of Protestant views would render a pro-Protestant POV to the article. Justin Eiler 00:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pictures 

message: This article should be a top tier article, one becoming a FA. However, ignoring WP:LEAD and blanking the majority of the introduction doesn't seem the way to achieve this. I propose restoring the moved content. It is ok to have a bit of redundency in the lead because it is supposed to give an overview of the article. That's the whole point.--Andrew c 00:13, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't blank the intro, I just moved parts to their appropriate sections.  And the parts I moved don't give an overview of the article, they discuss theology and philosophy about God and nothing else.  An overview would be like "several names have been given to God, the idea of God has developed over time, there are arguments for and against the existence of God, several people have claimed to have actually met God, the idea of God has had influence on several people/cultures ect...  That would be a general summary, not the discussions about theology and philosophy, which I found repeated almost verbatim later in the article. Roy Brumback 11:49, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I strongly disagree here and support the previous version with an adequate lead section. Redundent content is OK in the lead section. In fact, the lead section is SUPPOSED to summarize the content of the rest of the article. It is like a mini overview of what is to come. Does anyone else agree with me, or does the current 2 sentence intro work for everyone else? Was there someone specifically wrong about the previous lead section, and is a new lead section in the works, or are we simply disregarding how wikipedia article should be written?--Andrew c 02:36, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roy's blanking of the intro 

message: "And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead." (Exodus 12:29-30) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.163.39.185 (talk • contribs) 22:31, 2 November 2006  (UTC)
:You might find a more receptive audience on a sceptical website. Wikipedia is not the place for conjecture on such topics. Justin Eiler 22:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you know of a significant scholar who analyzed God as a "war criminal," then and only then would this be the perfect place for such a discussion.  What page of the Law did you have in mind?  --Rednblu 23:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

text: This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject. The article is about the concept of God generally, in all cultures that have such a concept. Justin Eiler 23:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is God A War Criminal? 

message: (Personal attack removed, per WP:NPA) Justin Eiler 23:07, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Sense of Proportion 

message: On a lighter note, I laughed out loud to see "The neutrality of this article is disputed". Of course it is... unless you have the address of God's web page. --andreasegde 12:05, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: are you aware of WP:NPOV? It is easily possible to write neutral articles about biased concepts. The trick is to simply states who said what, and who thought otherwise. We can fill volumes about various conceptions of God without violating neutrality just as long as we do not endorse any in Wikipedia's voice. dab (ᛏ) 12:25, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutrality

message: I think the section on the existence of God is overall pretty good and NPOV, but the last sentence stuck out to me.  "Additionally, the weight of popular belief and the overwhelming multiplicity of references to God serve to reify the idea of God -- to make the concept of God seem more probable than it would be in the absence of such attention."  This statement seems a bit POV to me.  The statement, while not directly disputing the existence of God, implies the argument that people's belief in God are based on the popularity of the concept and not on truth.  But, such an argument would be question-begging, because, IF God does exist, then the most obvious conclusion would be that the idea seems probable because it is true, and not because it is reified by its popularity.  It might be better stated "Additionally, the weight of popular belief and the overwhelming multiplicity of references to God may serve to reify the idea of God."  Or, at least, a reference should be added to back up the claim that the concept of God seems more probable because of the attention it recieves.  Thoughts?Nimrand 04:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to say that to claim the conclusion that it would seem popular opinion would suggest that God does exist would (A) steer the reader to conclude that God does exists, and (B) suggest that a conclusion can be drawn in the real world. But then I'm baised. I'm christian. Graham 195.212.199.56 14:01, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Heh, "The neutrality of this article is disputed." How does the new version of the section look? Besides making some formatting changes and mentioning variant positions (I'm thinking eg. of "weak agnosticism" vs. "strong agnosticism"), I deleted the last sentence. I saw it as out of place for being a specific argument for or against belief (depending on how you read it), and for being the only such argument in the section. Presumably the list of hoary arguments deserves its own encyclopedia, so the argument belongs at least in an article on the arguments themselves. As I understand it, the point of the section is "The existence and nature of God are very very disputed and there are lots of arguments on the subject." --Kris Schnee 06:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks good to me.  I agree, it seemed out of place.  Nimrand 14:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this NPOV?  Should it have a reference?