Talk:Barbara Thiering

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ] (If you rated the article, please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
	This article is supported by the Science and academia work group.

An appropriate infobox may need to be added to this article, or the current infobox may need to be updated. Please refer to the list of biography infoboxes for further information.

It is requested that a picture or pictures of this person be included in this article to improve its quality. Note: Wikipedia's fair use policy almost never permits the use of "fair use" images (such as promotional photos, press photos, screenshots, book covers and similar) to merely show what a living person looks like. Efforts should be made to take a free licensed photo during a public appearance, or obtaining a free content release of an existing photo instead.

[edit] Biography assessment rating comment

WikiProject Biography Assessment Drive

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 21:44, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Supernaturalistic"

To the person editing from 68.126.153.92 and 69.110.93.205, please keep in mind that encyclopedias (and perhaps encyclopedists) in general tend to be a little conservative in their vocabulary. Please allow me to suggest that you provide a citation of the article's subject's use of this word and it can be inserted into the article as "...what Thiering calls "supernaturalistic"[reference]", so that it is clear that this word is coined by Thiering and not by Wikipedia. Thanks for understanding. Jkelly 22:15, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

REPLY:

Dear friend,

Simply look at M-W.com and you will see the term "supernaturalistic" listed as an adjective. I am the person who originally posted the Barbara Thiering article, based on information that I requested and received from Dr. Thiering herself, so please allow that word to stand. That particular sentence came straight from her.

The original (and correct) sentence is:

"Her academic books and journal articles have challenged Christian orthodoxy, offering a new answer to its supernaturalistic beliefs."

It would be an error to say "supernatural beliefs," because we are not talking about "beliefs that are supernatural." Instead, we use "supernaturalistic," which means we are talking about beliefs that (ostensibly) *refer* to supernatural phenomenon. That's a very important distinction.

So your earlier point about the term being supposedly coined by Dr. Thiering is incorrect. It is an established term, which is recognized by reputable dictionaries.