Talk:Criticism of Christianity

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Contents 1 Encyclopedia 2 Can someone explain to me how this sentence belongs in this article? 3 Criticism of Salvation theology 4 Reducing the chaos 5 billwilliams.org and External links 6 Biblical Contradictions? 7 Once again, more stuff not having to do with Christianity... 8 Removing "Other Criticisms of Faith of Belief"

[edit] Encyclopedia

This artical does not seem to be written formally enough to me. Someone needs to fix it,

[edit] Can someone explain to me how this sentence belongs in this article?

"Theologian Alister McGrath, author of Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, And The Meaning Of Life, is critical of Dawkins' arguments for atheism."

I'm new to this side of Wikipedia, usually opting to stay on the more rational and objective side of wikipedia (science, mathematics, history). So maybe I should stay away from reading articles like these where agendas are sometimes questionable. Anyways, I really don't see how this sentence, describing a theologian's criticism on a scientist's case for atheism belongs in an article called "Criticism of Christianity". Wikipedia brown 21:08, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism of Salvation theology

The first block of text under this section seems to have a similar problem as the analysis section did, it says a few things, but never actually criticizes Christianity. It says that "Semetic religions" create the notion of the afterlife and whatnot as an explanation for what happens after death, but then never says why either skeptics, critics, or really anybody else see this as a bad thing. I haven't been very involved with this article, so perhaps this is supposed to relate to the sections below somehow? I don't understand its point. Homestarmy 01:55, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reducing the chaos

1. This article has become extremely disorganized and I have made some attempt to put it in order, by putting things in more suitable places, and shortening some of the sections where people have off-loaded large quotations from various authors. There is still a large undigested chunk of discussion relating to Professor Louis Pojman, which is far too long and too specific to be left thus, but I've run out of energy and time for now. Ming the Merciless 18:31, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
2. Had another go. The section on Obayashi's views is, like that on Pojman, far too specific and not integrated into the article (it reads like a student precis which has simply been bolted into the text).Ming the Merciless 00:01, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
3. Unless someone has strong arguments against, I propose (a) that the entire two sections relating to Obayashi's socio-psychological theory of the afterlife be moved to the article on Afterlife; (b) that the detailed list of examples of Biblical conflict be moved to the article on Internal consistency and the Bible. I think this would help focus this article. Ming the Merciless 22:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] billwilliams.org and External links

The latest addition is adding personal commentary to a link (a disclaimer if you will). If the link is problematic and doesn't meet our guidelines WP:EL, then we should discuss how it is problematic and then remove the link. Adding commentary like this is the solution to a controversial link. We either include it or don't include it. How many other links listed have commentary? I'm not against removing the link. What I am against is the 'disclaimer' added by the anonymous IP user.--Andrew c 22:56, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biblical Contradictions?

Haha. I love this section of the article! It is a poor attempt by the uneducated to display apparent "contradictions" within the Scripture! Unfortunately for the creators of that section, there are no contradictions. The authors of the section insist on basing the contradictions on passages found in the Old and New Testaments. Yet an understanding of the New Covenant by any of those creators would result in the removal of that section! The New Covenant was all about the abolishment of the Old, as God fulfilled the promise of the Messiah. Of course any person with no understanding of the motifs and promises in Scripture would assume there are contradictions. On the surface, there appear to be contradictions. But if the educated delve a little bit deeper, to the historical context, the problems melt away!
There is no place on this article for Christians to point out the historical, contextual, etc, circumstances that void these "contradictions" (after all, this is an encyclopedia, not a forum)... But please, if you are going to post "contradictions" ==> actually have some.
These simply need to be removed, not just because I'm against them, but because if any Joe Uneducated saw this section, he would assume the Bible actually has contradictions without knowing that it doesn't.
Aren't Encyclopedias supposed to educate the general public? --FivePointCalvinist (My Friends Call me 'Cal') 19:09, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The easiest and probably least likely to be edit warred out of existance solution would be to counter-cite the whole thing, namely, to get good references countering the argument that the passages are contradictions, and then discuss the counter-references generally given for the particular verse in question. Homestarmy 05:24, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Once again, more stuff not having to do with Christianity...

If I may have your attention yet again, I'd like to take a look at the beginning of the first section, "Criticism of Christianity as Irrational. Let's look at the first few paragraphs and quotes: "Many skeptics consider that all religious faith is essentially irrational, and incompatible with reason. Friedrich Nietzsche defined faith as "not wanting to know what is true." [1], and H. L. Mencken described it as "an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity. (Abraham Lincoln)[2] The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of reason. (Benjamin Franklin) [3] When you know a man's religious complexion, you know what sort of books he reads when he wants some more light, and what sort of books he avoids, lest by accident he get more light than he wants. (Mark Twain)[4] Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect. (James Madison) [5] The trouble with Faith is that it cannot coexist with Reason. When the religious beliefs run into a conflict with the senses, or with the world of science, we must either somehow accept incompatible ideas or we must choose. The number of intelligent people who attend church services regularly suggests that many people can live in a sort of schizophrenic reality, where the laws of nature operate at all times except when thinking religious thoughts. Or, they pretend to believe both but really only believe one. But some of us can't do that, and we are asked to abdicate our intellects as to preserve the purity of the dogma. Arthur Schopenhauer, Religion: A Dialogue [6] Schopenhauer also criticizes believers for mistakenly trusting those who claim religious authority, rather than thinking for themselves. Alvin Plantinga defines a theist as "one who believes in God as basic albeit not on logical grounds". In Is belief in God Rational, he argues that religious believers do not believe doctrines in the way that scientists (at least in principle) believe theories—they do not have a readiness to reconsider their belief: The mature believer, the mature theist, does not typically accept belief in God tentatively, or hypothetically, or until something better comes along. Nor, I think, does he accept it as a conclusion from other things he believes; he accepts it as basic, as a part of the foundations of his noetic structure. The mature theist commits himself to belief in God: this means that he accepts belief in God as basic. [7] This committed belief is sometimes called "faith based on zeal". Most philosophers consider that this subordination of reason to emotional commitment is detrimental, as in Plato's Crito, where Socrates states to the naive Crito, "Your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but if wrong, the greater the zeal the greater the evil." A similar sentiment is expressed by Bertrand Russell, who regards belief in the absence of evidence as harmful."

I would like to know where precisely any of this text criticizes Christianity explicitly. I cannot find the word "Christianity" in here anywhere, or "Bible", or really anything that necessarily deals with Christianity explicitly at all, many of these quotes could apply to Islam, Hinduism, or really any theistic religion whose adherants have faith in anything. And honestly, I have the feeling that's what many of them are, quotes applying to just any theistic religion based on some sort of faith. And while their certainly applicible to a Criticism of Religion article, they really aren't applicible to a Criticism of Christianity article, as they aren't directly criticizing Christianity at all. Just because someone expresses a view which is at odds with some form of Christian belief does not mean they are criticizing Christianity directly. Anyone have any other thoughts? Homestarmy 01:43, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree: much of the material in this article would be better moved to Criticism of Religion (which itself is rather in need of editing) though skeleton summaries might stay here with "main entry" links. This includes not only the critique of religious belief in general but also some of the half-edited section on Christianity as a psychological construct (though some of that probably is related specifically to Christian beliefs). Ming the Merciless 11:00, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The criticism of christianity webpage does not frequently receive administration edits which guarantee the quality of wikipedia is maintained. This was official after about a month ago. I've been monitoring the page for a year and a half now, it was the first time or so it would officially altered for standard wikipedia content. please leave the administration edits as they are in regards to faith. personal complaints about faith should be left on the criticism of world religions page. Faith in relation to christianity is promoted via Wikipedia's NPOV policy towards criticism pages - any critic page can mention criticism so long as it has sources and deals with an aspect (not neccessarily unique) to the position it criticisizes.

Biblical1 11:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Also another individual edited the caption of God and Job. Please leave personal or secular religious interpretations out of general criticism pages. The caption of job lamenting to God happens before his second whirlwind experience. "Satan" or the devil is the *agent* of God, biblical scholars actually qualify satan as one of the *sons of God*. This is not a unique position considering the old testament and its themes of henotheism or the belief in many Gods, Yahweh, the chief father God, was a God amongst a devil council.

The other angry god caption seen by Michelangelo most generally has God condemning man. personal interpretations are encouraged via wikipedia on such secular pages, please leave objective content alone. Biblical1 11:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Wait, what does that first thing mean? I don't understand what you mean by "administration edits", or what official thing happened to this page a month ago. (I seriously doubt there was a WP:OFFICE complaint) I also can't understand if you're objecting to my commenting out of the stuff not talking about Christianity or not :/. On your second part, I edited the captions because they were compleatly wrong or pure speculation, it was neither a personal nor secular judgement of mine that Job was not protesting against God's actions, because Satan was only acting on God's permission, God was not personally doing anything to Job at all, whereas the former caption indicated the opposite. Yes, Job was lamenting "to" God, but was not lamenting "about" God's actions against him, as God, of course, had not done anything to Job. I don't know who possibly thinks they can argue against this with a scholarly perspective, but I know one thing, the former caption certainly wasn't cited anyway, it appears to of been compleate OR. While my change was also OR even though the Bible supports it with plain language, it certainly wasn't worse than what was before simply because I changed it. The "angry god" caption was also OR, as the mood of the face in the painting can be described with many different adjectives, so to remove this unsourced dilemna, I simply removed the speculative adjective. I have no idea what "Administrative decision" you think occured with this article, but I have no plans to leave content which is either purely speculative, has nothing to do with the subject, or is flat out wrong alone. Homestarmy 14:00, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removing "Other Criticisms of Faith of Belief"

I'm going to remove the section, "other criticisms of faith or belief." It seems to be based entirely on one article by one philosophy professor, Louis Pojman, who is apparently not important enough for someone to have written more than a stub about him. No citation is given indicating that Pojman's views on this subject are in some way notable or influential. I conclude that this is not encyclopedia-worthy. Elliotreed 07:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)