Talk:Ascended Master Teachings

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Religion Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
	This article falls within the scope of the Left Hand Path work group. If you are interested in Left Hand Path-related topics, please visit the project page to see how you can help.

	Occult Portal Ascended Master Teachings is supported by WikiProject Occult in order to expand, improve, and standardize articles related to the occult. Feel free to edit the article attached to this talk page and/or become a participating member.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

[edit] ?

what the hell is this? 69.181.14.193 04:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

This article is a review of the beliefs of various organizations (also known as "Ascended Master Activities") that claim to be based upon revelations and understandings given directly by Ascended Masters. They believe that these "Teachings" were partially released by the Theosophical Society beginning in 1875, expanded by C.W. Leadbeater and Alice A. Bailey, and to have begun more detailed public release in the 1930s by the Ascended Masters through Guy Ballard in the I AM Activity and Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant. Emery 06:40, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Time for an overhaul

The series of articles in Category:Ascended Master Teachings seem to be mostly non-notable. I've ran a Lexis-Nexis search of all newspaper records and a Google Scholar search, and turned up very very little. The "I AM" Activity is notable, as it was a popular Los Angeles "cult" in the 1930s and 40s that made headlines when its founders were convicted of fraud, a conviction the Supreme Court overturned. It seems like the Ascended Master Teachings article is broader than the "I AM" organization, so perhaps that warrants an article as well. The rest should be redirected. Fireplace (talk) 22:30, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Object to merge "Ascended Master Teachings" is a religious belief system shared by dozens of organizations currently, and has adherents throughout the world. This article summarizes the main tenets of their religious / philosophical beliefs. Arion (talk) 22:38, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Object to Merge The "Ascended Master Teachings" are based on Theosophy but are different from Theosophy, so they should be included separately. The Ascended Master Teachings believe that the Ascended Masters can change their offices in the hierarchy, which is not believed by those adherent to Theosophy. The Ascended Master Teachings are also based on C.W. Leadbeater and Alice A. Bailey in addition to Madame Blavatsky. Besides Guy Ballard, Elizabeth Clare Prophet is also part of the Ascended Master Teachings and she is an important and well-known religious leader. The Seven Rays is an important article and should not be merged. The concept of the Seven Rays was originated by Alice A. Bailey based on ideas from Madame Blavatsky and is used by dozens of esoteric and New Age organizations beyond just the Ascended Master Teachings, most notably in the teachings of Benjamin Creme. Keraunos (talk) 00:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Most article linked to the Category:Ascended Master Teachings are also linked to the Category:Theosophy. Keraunos (talk) 01:06, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The articles on the most important beings who are regarded in this belief system as the Ascended masters, i.e., El Morya, Kuthumi, Paul the Venetian, Serapis Bey, Master Hilarion, Master Jesus, and St. Germain should not be merged because they are referred to from as well. Keraunos (talk) 01:18, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The only articles which could legitimately be merged would be Ascended masters, Great White Brotherhood, and Spiritual Hierarchy, since they all refer to the same group of deities, the beings called by Theosophists The Masters of the Ancient Wisdom. Keraunos (talk) 01:18, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with merging Ascended Masters with "Ascended Master Teachings". "Ascended Masters" are specific beings that are part of that belief system, just as "Saints" or "Angels" are particular beings that are part of the belief system of the "Roman Catholic Church" or "Christianity or "Sufism" or "Islam". Arion (talk) 01:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Support merge - Grown way out of hand. Adam Cuerden ^talk 01:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Object to merge: Wikipedia is not running out of space, and to merge these articles would require deleting a lot of content. If unsourced or unencyclopedic content should be pruned for other reasons, then that should happen before considering a merge. —Whig (talk) 08:36, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Don't merge Seven Rays. It sounds like people are talking about merging more than one article. I clicked on the merge notice in Seven Rays and it brought me here. But this is about merging other articles too. Seven rays should not merge because it's used by lots of different groups and not alll in the same way. So if it was merged into one group then the seven rays used by the other group wouldn't be able to go into that one and it would have to go somewhere else, or else that other article would get messed up. Also, I just found some books showing that Seven Rays are in other religions too, like Hinduism and I added those footnotes to the article. So Seven Rays should stay as it's own page. --Linda (talk) 10:16, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

That's a good explanation (although the article probably needs a rewrite). It seems like the various articles like Master Jesus should be merged into Seven rays instead of here, unless they each meet the WP:N standard of significant coverage from reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Fireplace (talk) 20:42, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for considering my comment. I'm sure the Seven rays article can be improved. I don't know about the Ascended Masters articles or if they should be merged into Ascended Masters Teachings or not, but they don't fit as part of the Seven rays article because they're not the same topic, so let's take off the merge box from the top of the Seven rays article, OK? --Linda (talk) 06:20, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

There's still a question of whether Seven rays passes WP:N, or whether it should be at most a section on pages like Ascended Master Teachings and whatever other religions might use it. Let's leave the tag up for now while this can be sorted out. Fireplace (talk) 14:29, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Oppose merge. The two AfDs proposed for the group of related articles were both closed with a result of keep and keep all. The AfDs did not include this particular article, though it was mentioned in the discussions. In the AfDs the support for keeping each of the individual Ascended Masters articles was strongly decisive with minimal "delete" comments.

Some of the articles suggested for merging are either stubs or quotefarms. Those need to be improved, but there's no hurry. There are a zillion stub articles about fine points and terminology of mainstream religions too. In comparison, these are a tiny number of articles and there is no problem letting them be improved over time.

I suggest that we close out this merge discussion and move on to more productive work. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 02:24, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:SELFPUB problems with this article

Ascended Master Teachings passes WP:N, but the majority of the content in this article is sourced to self-published or otherwise questionable sources coming from within the movement. While such sources can be used in this article, they are limited by the policies of WP:SELFPUB. There do seem to be some reliable, independent sources out there (mostly books on minority religious movements and cults in the 20th century), so the article should, it seems, be rewritten from the ground up using those sources. Fireplace (talk) 19:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The article on Jehovah's Witnesses illustrates how discussions of a religious belief has references to books written by the adherents of that belief. The same is true of Roman Catholic Church and references to the "self-published" Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church when discussing what their beliefs are. Arion (talk) 21:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Look more closely at WP:SELFPUB. It states clearly that self-published sources are OK so long as they avoid certain things, such as "... the article is not based primarily on such sources." This is not a problem for the Catholic Church articles, but it is for many of these. Antelan ^talk 08:11, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that more references would be better and that the article has lots of room for improvement. However, the references in this article are not all self-published. They can't be, because the topic appears in the literature of more than one organization. They are not all related and do not form a single "movement". And there are a few books listed published by mainstream publishers: MacMillan Publishing Company, Oxford University Press, and Triumph Books. Finding more like those would be a good plan.

Regarding the Catholic Church articles, there are many that have only self-published references, and no-one is complaining about them so far, for example: Transubstantiation and Eucharist (Catholic Church) --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 08:50, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that complying with WP guidelines is important. I disagree that the articles you have highlighted only point to self-published sources, unless you believe that, for one example of many, the University of Sydney self-published the Bible. Antelan ^talk 08:53, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

No of course the Bible is not self-published in that sense of who printed the book, but the words in the Bible are part of the Church tradition, people within the "movement" (on a huge scale clearly), providing the content basis for the references that are quoted. There are no "outsiders" quoted in those articles that I can see. Maybe I missed one on Transubstantiation which has a lot of footnotes, but for sure on Eucharist (Catholic Church), all the sources are from believers. Here's another example: Catechism of the Catholic Church. That doesn't bother me though, that's my point. I see no problem with quoting members of a religion as sources about the beliefs of their religion, as long as notability has been separately established as well.--Jack-A-Roe (talk) 09:06, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

If someone were to have a serious concern about their notability, the Catholic articles you're highlighting could be independently sourced, as they should be. Because the Catholic Church is so large and well known, it's difficult to find many people who question the notability of most of the subjects of its articles. On the other hand, more minor religions may have their notability questioned more often on purely statistical grounds (i.e., people just aren't familiar), so providing outside sources will be more important for such articles on a practical level. Antelan ^talk 09:46, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Arguments that we can apply different standards to a religion that has a smaller number of members are unconvincing. Arion (talk) 18:09, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

There are not different standards. There are different levels of familiarity, which will cause different levels of acceptance at face value. Establishing notability of relatively unknown subjects is more important - not because of different standards, again, but because of different levels of general recognition. Antelan ^talk 19:43, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Courtesy notification of report at WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard

This is to inform editors on this page that this topic, along with a list of related topics, have been mentioned in a report at this link on the WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard. It has been mentioned in the noticeboard report that some of the articles listed in the report may be nominated for deletion.

The report at the noticeboard was not posted by me. I'm placing this comment here as a courtesy for the editors working on this article. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 06:35, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Minority religious beliefs should not be treated as "fringe theories"

All one can do with any religion, let alone those apart from the mainstream, is to faithfully report their beliefs taken from the literature by the believers of their religious belief system. In doing so, we are not assesing truth claims (such as the Mormons believing that God is a physical being on another planet), one simply reports on the beliefs held, with as much accuracy as possible - with reliable sources and references.

There is no need at all to assess the truth claims of the 20th century new religions. If people were to delve into assessing the truth claims of religion, then an entry on Christianity may as well begin with assessing whether God exists. The best approach would seem to be an accurate rendition of any movement's beliefs, nature, history and activities (regardless of what a Wikipedia editor's own views are). Questioning the validity of religious beliefs isn't the role of an encyclopedia entry. Arion (talk) 13:25, 14 December 2007 (UTC)