[WikiEN-l] This is NOT a religious encyclopedia; we do not push religious beliefs.

[Robert]

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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