Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Biblical definition of God

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. --Coredesat 03:54, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biblical definition of God

Biblical definition of God (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

I stared at this one for a while to try and decide if it's at all salvageable as sometimes WP:OR can be. Perhaps an encyclopedic topic with this article could be written, but what is here is nowhere near that and not worth trying to salvage. You get to the last paragraph and it devolves into some weird ... I'm not sure. Something about Einstein and the Theory of Relativity. Totally unsourced. Arkyan • (talk) 17:20, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete - something might be made of the topic, but this article isn't it. No sources other than the biblical cites, and Wikipedia isn't the place for exegesis. -- BPMullins | Talk 17:55, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
    • There are actually several sources, now. Uncle G 12:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. God, special relativity, if only we had Cantor's Theorem, we would have had all the traditional enthusiasms of the journeyman crackpot. Pop Secret 18:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete - if "In this article, with the help of physics I defined God" isn't OR, I don't know what is... - iridescenti (talk to me!) 20:40, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep and perhaps rename (Biblical conception of God). The OR paragraph about physics at the end of the article (Pop Secret, Iridescenti) was added later by a crackpot and I removed it. The topics itself is notable and was subject of numerous books and articles. The problem is that our article is not sourced (and not well balanced etc.), but temporary lack of sources is not a valid deletion reason.--86.49.47.138 21:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Editors appear to be basing their judgement of the topic upon some unencyclopaedic content that was added to the article by one single editor. Yes, this article contains no sources. But that does not mean that sources do not exist. In fact they do. ISBN 1419164619 spends pretty much the whole of page 10 on "God is Spirit", for example. ISBN 0825431549 discusses "God is Spirit" on page 35, along with the Westminster Confession of Faith of the Reformed Churches, which it describes as "perhaps the best and most biblical definition of God". ISBN 0867050535 devotes pages 6 to 8 on God "In the Bible", and can be used to confirm several points of analysis given in this article.

    The correct way to salvage this article is not to nominate it for deletion, but to employ the aforementioned sources and any others that one can find to check the article for accuracy, citing the sources against which it is checked and modifying the article to bring it into line with the sources as needed. The correct tag for that is {{verify}}, not {{afd1}}. Keep. Uncle G 22:54, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete The nature of God is discussed very fully from every notable point of view in various articles. This is just an essay summarizing the topic. The content is already included. DGG 04:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletions. IZAK 07:32, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete and redirect to Names of God in Judaism. IZAK 07:32, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
    • The discussions that the sources have about the definition of God in the Bible are not solely about the name, and are not related solely to Judaism. Uncle G 12:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep, precisely per Uncle G's point. --Keefer4 | Talk 10:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. The matter has already been covered in other articles. This is just an essay, bordering on OR. 202.54.176.11 12:13, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. Per WP:V. Understanding that the issue is the topic, not the article, I don't believe we have the ability to verify an article on the subject. Which Bible? The Jewish one, the Christian one (and within that, the Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, Coptic, or what)? Moreover, each version is subject to many varying interpretations. All we have available to us is what various religions and writers say is the Bible's view. How can we tell how much of what they say is "the Bible's" view and how much is their own view? Even if we did nothing but select quotes someone would have to determine which quotes to select, and different selections would result in very different views. I think we could all agree that an article called God's view of God couldn't be verified when all we have in the way of sources is people's view of God. This article isn't different enough to come within WP:V. --Shirahadasha 20:13, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment We can reliably source the Westminster Confession of Faith's view of the Bible's view of God. But why not just call it the Westminster Confession of Faith's view of God? It seems that either material here would be duplicative of material elsewhere, or this is a WP:POVFORK.--Shirahadasha 20:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
    • All we have available to us is what various religions and writers say is the Bible's view. — In other words, we have secondary sources that have done the research and analysis, whose conclusions Wikipedia, as a tertiary source, can report. You have just made an argument that the article is both verifiable and not original research, entirely contradicting your first sentence. Uncle G 12:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete and Redirect per IZAK. רח"ק | Talk | Contribs 20:19, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.