slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Tom Haws takes the view that NPOV means articles must reflect popular opinion, not scholarly opinion. For several weeks, Tom has been arguing that the introduction of the article [[Human]] must reflect religious beliefs (that e.g. human beings have souls and were created in the image of God), and not simply biological and anthropological ones (that we are bipedal primates who engage in extensive tool use and live in complex societies). While no editor on that page disputes that religious views be discussed in the article, a number of us do argue that these views have no place in the introduction.
I don't see why it wouldn't be appropriate to mention these in the introduction. To a vast majority of the world's population, including a number of its philosophers who have specifically considered the question, the main distinguishing feature of humans is not "bipedal primates who engage in extensive tool use and live in complex societies", any more than "have two ears" or "have fingernails" are their main distinguishing features.
If we were discussing an article specifically on the biological species [[Homo sapiens]], I could see that viewpoint, but the article on [[human]] must encompass, both in the body and the introduction, much more than merely the biological definition of the species.
-Mark