[WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

[Karl A. Krueger]

On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 08:03:34PM -0400, Delirium wrote:
> I don't see a problem with that article.  What else is there to say 
> about it?  The Book of Mormon claims something about a person named 
> "Nephi", and we report "the Book of Mormon claims the following about 
> Nephi".  Do we need to explicitly say "however, people who think the 
> Book of Mormon is mostly hogwash think this claim is also hogwash"?  
> Should we add to the [[Nirvana]] and [[Shiva]] articles that a lot of 
> people think that Nirvana is nonsense and Shiva might not actually exist?

We do reasonably well with fictional characters.  We mention the context
in which they appear, and then go on to discuss their character and life
as presented in the story.  We don't keep saying "By the way, Luke
Skywalker doesn't exist" or "Nobody sane believes Harry Potter -really-
lives in England; after all, there's no village of Little Whinging".

The same approach should work for religious and mythological figures --
start by mentioning the context in which they appear (e.g. the Book of
Mormon) and then go on to describe them within that context.  This
should work just as well for Nephi as for Noah or Maui or Krishna or
Apollo.

Consider the following passage from [[Apollo]]:

	Apollo had an affair with a mortal princess named Leucothea,
	daughter of Orchamus and sister of Clytia. Leucothea loved
	Apollo who disguised himself as Leucothea's mother to gain
	entrance to her chambers. Clytia, jealous of her sister because
	she wanted Apollo for herself, told Orchamus the truth,
	betraying her sister's trust and confidence in her. Enraged,
	Orchamus ordered Leucothea to be buried alive. Apollo refused to
	forgive Clytia for betraying his beloved, and a grieving Clytia
	wilted and slowly died. Apollo changed her into an incense
	plant, either heliotrope or sunflower, which follows the sun
	every day.

Would this passage be improved greatly by stating that modern science
holds that the heliotrope or sunflower evolved rather than being created
by Apollo from the corpse of a princess?

-- 
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>