Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Spiritual Atheism

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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. Sandstein (talk) 20:34, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Spiritual Atheism

Spiritual Atheism (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Neologism, original research. While there are certainly atheists who consider themselves spiritual, there is no evidence offered that shows this is a term with established and significant usage. Indeed, it is a neologism by the author's own admission, and creation of this article appears to be part of a campaign by The Center for Spiritual Atheism to get the term recognized by dictionaries and other resources, and this "organization" appears to be little more than a website with no notability. The definition of the term is not supported by any reliable sources, and seems to refer to a type of Pantheism. There are references, but I know that at least one of them does not support the content--G.H. Smith's book does not list the term in its index, nor do I recall it ever addressing the subject. There are no in-line citations supporting any of the content, which appears to be purely original research. Nick Graves (talk) 17:07, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Delete and Move to user space. This is a notable topic generally, but it appears to have been added to Wikipedia, as the nominator states, as a promotional piece for a website, and as such seems to be entirely original research. However, if you search for the exact pairing on google "spiritual atheism" you get 4,780 hits, with many forum discussions and web pages about being both an atheist and spiritual (and again using this exact neologism). In fact I heard a discussion recently on Speaking of Faith where Greg Epstein discussed this very inclination after being asked about it by the show's host. So my recommendation is to suggest to the entry's author that s/he move it to user space and work on making it something other than an promotional tool before putting it back up. Perhaps there are people from the Atheism Wikiproject who would be willing to help. I think simply deleting this page without noting the fact that it is a viable topic is a problem and sends the wrong message. PelleSmith (talk) 17:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm amending my original assessment because from further searching it seems that the slightly different emphasis described by the article Ttiotsw linked below is much closer to the predominant usage out there. In other words I still think this is a concept that is notable, and growing in notability, but its too far removed from the promotional material posted by entry creator. Also, it might be tough presently to find third party sourcing, as the thousands of hits out there are mostly to self-descriptive accounts of people calling themselves spiritual atheists. The similarity in what these people claim, however, is rather astonishing and I don't agree at all with Ttiotsw that because there is no academic literature available (which isn't surprising since its a neologism), or because there is no notable organization around this concept yet, that all of these testimonials don't amount to something mildly significant. Don't get me wrong, I'm no spiritual atheist, but mildly self-conscious self-identifications, however simplistically they may be worked out, garner more attention than that.PelleSmith (talk) 20:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. —- Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 18:16, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete as not notable, though the editor can move to userspace as suggested above to build up the references. It looks like the starting of an article and the search string "Spiritual Atheism" gets hits but the hits are crap and contradictory to the article (e.g. [1] feels it's addressing a different idea). No big-name journal or paper stands out so it just doesn't feel notable. It's a neologism. Ttiotsw (talk) 19:16, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Right now I'm undecided between stubbify and delete. Current article appears to be original research veering toward the self-promotional, so current article has to go. However, underlying topic may be marginally notable, although there seems to be a haystack of personal-page type unreliable sources from which it might be possible to extract a needle of reliable ones. --Shirahadasha (talk) 21:25, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment The definition presented here seem substantively the same as the article on Naturalistic spirituality, and there also exists Secular spirituality as a possible merge/redirect target. The current promotionalism needs to go (and someone should probably keep an eye on all those redlinks), but I am not yet sure what to do about the rest of it. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 22:16, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete Original research. Yahel Guhan 06:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete - No doubt, many atheists consider themselves spiritual, however the article here doesn't appear to significantly differentiate this philosophy from Deism or even Naturalism. While references are mentioned, no in-text citations or anyththing specific is cited to demonstrate notability, and all the information that actually exists in the entry reads more like an essay than an exposition of properly sourced data. ◄Zahakiel► 13:22, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Atheism-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 13:51, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge and some serious clean-up with naturalistic spirituality/secular spirituality, all of which are almost identical topics and do have notability. However, across all three topics there is only one in-text citation along with tons of original research. -- MacAddct  1984 (talk • contribs) 14:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete Definitely POV! "Non-literal Christianity" = "spiritual atheism", and apparently, so is anyone who doesn't believe what the author believes. Looks like we'll be going to hell after all. Mandsford (talk) 19:38, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete I think the nominator said it best, while this is a concept that certainly exists and I know many people who have taken a similar belief (myself partially included) but as a term it is very uncommon. There is the one website, "spiritualatheism.com" that uses the term, but it is far from a reliable source. So I have to say delete without merging as a nonnotable neologism without coverage from reliable sources. I did manage to find this [2], but it doesn't really discuss the actual term as much as the concept, and I'm not sure of its reliability either. The Dominator (talk) 13:53, 11 April 2008 (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.