On the Unitarian-Universalist article, a subject came up
that would be of interest (I believe) to anyone working on
any religion articles. I recently added an internal
criticism of a religious movement"
Rev. Earl K. Holt III, minister of King's Chapel in
Boston, the nation's first Unitarian church has recently
been at the lead of offering internal criticism of the
direction of the UU Church. In a recent interview with
the Boston Globe he stated "I'm ready to defend now the
hypothesis that Unitarian Universalism as it presently
exists is not in any meaningful way...a continuity of
either of the traditions" [Christian and monotheistic
from which it originated from]. He notes that the
UU Church now officially has no theological beliefs that
adherents must have, and it is tolerant of nearly any
belief system. He concludes that "at some point,
pandering would not become too strong a word" his
church has lost unity.
Source: ''Revisiting Unitarian Universalism''
Rich Barlow, The Boston Globe, July 17, 2004
In response, UtherSRg removed this addition of mine, and he
noted:
"While I agree that Rev Holt's criticism has merit, I
wonder why this was placed in the article as a direct
quote. I don't believe other religions have such direct
criticisms on their articles. I could understand a brief
summary of various criticisms."
[[User:UtherSRG|UtherSRG]] 06:27, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I gave the following response, and would like the viewpoint
of others here. This may be about a general policy question
that warrents Wiki-En, or even the main Wiki list,
attention.
My reply:
Your comment and question is fair enough! It turns out
that other Wikipedia articles ''do'' have substantial
sections on internal criticisms. Within the [[Judaism]] and
related articles, there is plenty of dicusion of internal
criticism; the same is true for many of our articles on
Islam (see especially the sections on Shiite versus Sunni
forms of Islam.) I think that all of our religions and
social movement articles should include sections on
internal criticism, especially when such internal criticism
is openly discussed among many adherents of that movement.
Some examples that I think should be discussed include:
:Why some members of the UU movement have criticised it, as
it has broadened to the point where it includes nearly any
faith, or none at all.
:Why many members of Conservative Judaism have criticised
their own movement for not cultivating an observant layity.
:Why many members of Reform Judaism have criticised their
own movement for creating a new definition of who is a Jew,
thus creating a schism that may create two separate Jewish
peoples.
:Why many members of Orthodox Judaism have criticised their
own movement for not taking seriously the role of women as
equals, the way that Orthodoxy understands homosexuality,
or the increasing uses of churmras (legal stringincies).
:Why many members of Catholic Christianity have criticised
their own movement for not allowing priests to marry, and
for not policing their own priesthood enough vis-a-vis the
child abuse scandal.
Including external criticisms are another issue entirely,
and I think we should avoid this whenever feasible. I am
sure that one could write a long section full of polemics
on why Christians think that Jews and Muslims are wrong,
and why pagans are worse than wrong; similar, one could
write a long section full of polemics on why Muslims think
that Christians and Muslims are wrong, and why pagans are
worse than wrong! Generally, any well-known religion has
been the subject of a vast critical and polemical attack
from many people outside that religion. We need to
extremely careful about this. But the subject of internal
constructive criticism is a different issue altogether.
As long as we make sure that all info is written in an NPOV
fashion, what do you think?
Robert (RK)
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> It'll probably be a young kid, clearly from the US.
Of course. Because the U.S. clearly has a monopoly on
cranks of all stripes, especially the right-wing
variety. Please avoid this type of blanket
condemnation in the future--it's insulting and
unbecoming, esp. from an editor whom I admire.
Meelar
=====
In one of a series of interviews since teaming up on Tuesday, Kerry and Edwards predicted they would win the political fight over which party best exemplifies the values and ethics of most Americans, but Kerry said they would wage that battle on their terms and not what he called the Republican Party's "little political, hot-button, cultural, wedge-driven, poll-driven values."
--Washington Post, July 11, 2004
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I placed the following warning on the user talk page of Stopthebus18:
"You aren't allowed to threaten other Wikipedians, in case you didn't
know. Your remarks on my user talk page were out of line. Kindly confine
your comments to the topic of improving the Wikipedia, or failing that
just be friendly. Otherwise, I'll have to ask the arbitration committee
to look into this matter. --Uncle Ed 16:56, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)"
This was in response to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Ed_Poor&diff=472917
3&oldid=4729140
...the latest in a series of increasingly hostile remarks.
Ed Poor
For over a year now Zero has been taunting me with personal
attacks, slander, and taunting with attacks on any Jews who
differ with him. Zero constantly deletes chunks of
articles, in order to censor facts that he disagrees with.
Shockingly, the deleted material isn't even contested; Zero
flat out admits that the groups mentioned have the views
presented.
In recent days Zero has unilaterally (again) removed large
amounts of verified facts from the article we have on
Israel Shahak; the text he removed was on the one subject
for which Shahak is most well known. Shahak today is known
for his writings against religious Jews, which have been
rejected by mainstream historians. Today, not a single
maninstream historian relies on Shahak; his work only
exists on Nazi, Christian Identitity and White Supremacist
Websites. (Please do not take my word for this; check out
Google and see for yourself.)
Long time members will recall that certain people
attempted to sabotage our articles on Richard Wagner and on
Holocaust denial. They repeatedly denied that any
anti-Semitism existed in Wagner or in Holoaust denier. They
claimed that it was a "strawman" that the ideas about Jews
of Richard Wagner and of Holocaust Deniers were rejected by
all historians, and were only accepted today by Nazi,
Christian Identitity and White Supremacist Websites.
Fortunately, at the time, sane voices here prevailed. A
number of us noted that one's personal feelings have no
place in Wikipedia articles. Our NPOV policy demands that
we phrase all facts in NPOV terminology.
Thus, for the Richard Wagner article we extensively
discussed Wagner's views on Jews, giving direct quotes so
that readers could judge for themselves. The article then
noted that these views were not accepted as factual, yet
were adopted as truthful by Nazis and other similar groups.
While the anti-Semitic Wagner supporters screamed bloody
murder, the rest of us Wikipedians kept this NPOV
discussion. The facts were there in NPOV format, and the
readers could judge for themselves.
Now the same thing is occuring here in the Israel Shahak
article. Thus the article discussed Shahak's views on Jews,
giving direct quotes so that readers could judge for
themselves. The article then noted that these views were
not accepted as factual, and have been rebutted by
virtually the entire Jewish community, from secular to
Reform to Orthodox to the ADL.
The articles states (when not censored by Zero) that
Shahak's claims are only accepted by anti-Semitic groups.
This is a fact. However, Zero is screaming bloody murder,
and on the talk page has engaged in bashing against me, and
then against the Jewish community. He now is trying to get
me banned, and he keeps reverting the page.
Wikipedia needs to insist that NPOV policy be followed,
even on articles for Richard Wagner and Israel Shahak. We
cannot let Zero mass revert everything that he wants to
keep hidden, and we cannot let him slander the Jewish
community (or the blacks, or the gays, etc.) We cannot ban
people just because they want articles to contain verified
factual information in NPOV format.
Obviously I and others are flexible on the specific wording
of said facts (as I have stated on the articles' talk pag)
The problem is that Zero has repeatedly stated that he
won't let the issue even be discussed, which is a serious
violation of Wikipedia ethics.
Robert (RK)
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I agree wholeheartedly with RK:
* Wikipedia's [[NPOV]] policy often means multiple points
of view. This means providing not only the points of view
of different groups today, but different groups in the
past.
*Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. One important task for
articles is to explain things. In the case of human beliefs
and practices, explanation encompasses not only what
motivates individuals who hold these beliefs and practices,
but an account of how such beliefs and practices came to be
and took shape.
*Wikipedia articles on history and religion draw from a
religion's sacred texts. But Wikipedia articles on history
and religion also draw from modern archaeological,
historical and scientific sources
The above three points should go directly into the [[Wikipedia:NPOV]]
article, if they're not there already. Good work, Robert!
As for dealing with they way adherents view their own religions, we can
also apply the W's neutrality policy. Even if believers "would prefer
that the articles describe their faith as they see it," I suggest we
regard THE WAY THEY SEE IT as merely their own point of view.
This has worked well with the Unification Church, with its prime
Wikipedian adherent (yours truly!) satisfied to have the article
describe Rev. Moon as "regarded by his followers to be the Messiah" --
which is the POV of Unificationists. The article also satisfies other
readers by reporting that non-adherents often vigorously dispute Moon's
claim of Messiahship.
Moreover, _all_ the articles on religion take a step back and avoid
endorsing or condemning the view that "there is one God", don't they?
(If not, they should, right?) Christians, Jews and atheists are all
satisfied with a statement like "Judaism teaches that God creating
everything."
This statement is really a paradigm of NPOV: it _attributes_ a claim to
a source.
SOURCE: Judaism, the Bible and/or Jews
CLAIM: That God exists as a supreme being who created everything
Note that there are many variations, minor and major, on what that claim
is; and who precisely makes that claim. Which is really the meat and
potatoes of any article on religion: readers want to know just exactly
WHAT is believed and WHO believes it. And it's a good thing W is not
paper, because it takes a lot of words to describe these beliefs and
believers.
Finally, the belief that "the way things are is the
way things have always been; any differences are from
heretical sects that don't represent the real religion" is sometimes a
component or major current of thought in religions or sects. This belief
or point of view should be _mentioned_ in the article, but neither
endorsed or condemned.
If some religion like -- oh, I dunno, Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh Day
Adventists? -- asserts that their teachings have NEVER evolved since
first being articulated by their founder; well, then, simply state that
_they_ assert _that_.
SOURCE: certain JWs
CLAIM: that the core teachings have never varied
If some critics insist on calling this an "ahistorical perspective", we
should name these critics and mention (or better summarize) their
claims.
Jimbo and Larry's NPOV policy stands the test of time. It handles all
cases. It's the basis for resolving even the most difficult of disputes
over articles.
All we ever have to do is say that THIS SIDE claims THIS, and that
ANOTHER SIDE claims ANOTHER THING.
Uncle Ed
Edit summary for [[Talk:Israel Shahak]]:
Sysops, please stop Zero's ad homenim personal attacks and
anti-Semitic Jew bashing
You have exactly one guess who wrote this masterpiece.
I'd like to reply as follows:
Sysops, when oh when can we finally be rid of this lunatic?
Zero.
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In passing review of Wikipedia:
"For example, if you consult the world's most useless online text,
the captive Wikipedia, you'll see Fuller's entry is a plug for
Eric "AI" Drexler."
From:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/14/buckminster_fuller_stamp/
Guess Andy doesn't love us.
Bill
Frd bauder responds to SLR's discussion on NPOV:
> Big problem here though. For example, if you apply this
> to Judaism, you are taking the Reform Judaism position.
Fred, are you joking? We are NOT a fundamentalist religious
encycloepdia. We are NOT here to push the Orthodox Jewish
view of history, ethics and the Bible in our articles.
Similarly, we are NOT here to push the Fundamentalist
Christian or Muslim views of history, ethics and the Bible
in our articles.
>From day one fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims
have swammped our talk pages claiming about imaginary bias
in Wikipedia, because we use history instead of blindly
accepting their POV as factual. And fortunately, the great
majority of us have reverted their partisan POV edits, and
restored Wikipedia articles to be in line with our NPOV
policy.
You really need to re-read what our NPOV policy says. For
instance, We do not say that: "God created the world 6,000
years ago."
Rather we say something like: "According to many Orthodox
Jews God created the world 6,000 years ago. However, this
belief has evolved over time, and even in the medieval era
a number of Jewish rationalists disagreed with this view.
Using the science and philosophy of their, they concluded
that the world was much, much older, and that such
reinterpretations were not a violation of Jewish principles
of faith. Today, all non-fundamentalist Jews reject such
views, and instead re-interpret their religious texts to be
in consonance with modern say scientific findings, to show
that the the world was created several billion years ago."
As SLR writes, NPOV often means multiple points of view.
This means providing not only the points of view of
different groups today, but different groups in the past."
If anyone is unwilling to follow NPOV policy, they cannot
contribute to our articles. End of story.
As SLR writes "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. One important
task for articles is to explain things. In the case of
human beliefs and practices, explanation encompasses not
only what motivates individuals who hold these beliefs and
practices, but an account of how such beliefs and practices
came to be and took shape."
He is right. To do anything less means the death of
Wikipedia. We are not a religious encyclopedia with a
religious agenda, no matter what some of our contributors
may wish.
Robert (RK)
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