Talk:The End of Faith

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of multiple WikiProjects. Click [show] for further details

Philosophy Portal This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details. Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. ??? This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale. Additional information: Related task forces (major fields): Philosophy of religion Philosophical literature   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. Start This article has been rated as start on the Project's quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.) The End of Faith is part of WikiProject Atheism, which aims to organize, expand, clean up, and guide atheism related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page for more details. Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the Project's quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.) For more information and how you can help click Show → If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page for more details. Quick help: See changes to: Main talk page Article layout Links to Atheism information and Wikipedia:Research resources Writing about religion and Article development Citing sources, Verifing Sources and Original research Assume good faith and be civil Core articles Atheism article New atheism articles To Do List: edit - history - watch - purge Join WikiProject atheism and be bold Show off a userbox with {{userWPA}} or {{userWPA2}} and attract potential members Help with articles. See this month's adopt an article. Help out with the To-do lists Be consistent Use a "standard" layout for atheism related articles (see: atheism layout style, The perfect article, and Featured articles) Add Atheism navigation template on the bottom of all atheism articles; (use {{Atheism}} or see navigation template) Add Atheism info box to all atheism related talk pages (use {{Wpa}} or see info box) Add {{Category:atheism}} to the bottom of all atheism related articles, so it shows up on the list of atheism articles Maintenance / Etc Find/cite sources for all positions of an article (see citing sources, and atheism references). Try to expand stubs, however, some "new" articles may be neologisms, as this is common with positions on theories on life and may be suitable for deletion (see deletion process) Watch the list of atheism related articles and add to accordingly (see atheism articles) And always write for an encyclopedia. Article to improve for the month of November Agnosticism Create Notable atheist articles Shorten / merge into others false choice into false dilemma - discuss whether you are for or against this merge here Expand an atheism stub Your immediate attention false choice into false dilemma - discuss whether you are for or against this merge here Clarify references in Atheism, using footnotes. Books Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Books. To participate, you can edit the article. You can discuss the Project at its talk page. Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the Project's quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at in the comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)

To-do list for The End of Faith:	edit · history · watch · refresh
Here are some tasks you can do: Expand: Maybe start with a background section explaining a little about what lead Harris to write the book Perhaps create subsections of 'synopsis' Expand on reception Other: Create a Wikiquote page for the book

Contents 1 Clean up 2 Afterword responses? 3 Torture 4 Criticism 5 Fair use rationale for Image:The End of Faith.jpg

[edit] Clean up

Thanks Jeff for inserting the cleanup tag. I have removed it. I have re-read the article and I feel that, while it may contain the odd dubious phrase, it is otherwise a fairly factual description of the book's contents. I would be grateful to hear of your specific concerns, and indeed of anyone else's.—Laurence Boyce 08:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

(users often use the very general "cleanup" tag, because there are a kinda confusing number of specific tags ;)

I think possibly Jeff meant to use (or at least imply) the {{ sections }} tag, which I'd agree with. It needs at the least a clearly defined lead section; I'll add a "synopsis" header as an example. I don't think the synopsis should be broken into subsections; but the article could use additional sections, such as the critical/public reaction. Actually, a large quantity of the Sam Harris article should be merged to here instead of there.

Hope that helps. --Quiddity 20:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Quiddity – I'll take a look at this article tomorrow. However, I must say I find the phrase "a large quantity of the Sam Harris article should be merged to here instead of there" slightly alarming, and I'm not sure I really agree with it. Anyway, I'll sort this article first, and then maybe elaborate on what I mean, and we can discuss further. Thanks again.—Laurence Boyce 21:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I meant to say "...sh could probably be merged to here...".

Everything from the "World view" section, to the end of the "Criticism" section is (very debatably) about the book's contents more than about the man. That's just my subjective/mergist opinion though. Duplication bugs me ;) Feel free to ignore that opinion. -Quiddity 21:44, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I have now put in place a sectioned article which I trust will give satisfaction. On the wider issue, clearly there's going to be some overlap, but I don't agree that much of the Sam Harris article should be merged over here. The Harris article predated this article by about four months. However, when I wrote it, I was thinking ahead to a time when there would be a book article, so I based the Harris article largely on his media talks, not on the book. A good example would be his lecture, The View from the End of the World.

In fact just about every section of the Sam Harris article now contains phrases or references or events which are not to be found in The End of Faith. Having said that, I do think I will need to tweak the Harris article a bit now. But clearly the Harris article is set to develop further, whereas once we get this article right, one might think it would remain fairly static. Thank you again for your interest.

Laurence Boyce 09:49, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Afterword responses?

Can someone put in some summaries of the responses to his critics Harris gives in his afterword in the new edition? I don't want to buy another copy of the book to find them out myself, and it would be a good addition to this article. 213.122.54.113 14:33, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

The afterword (dated May 2005) is eight pages long and, I would suggest, is not worth buying the book for. Nor does it merit a detailed description in the article, in my view. Briefly it consists of the following:

• Introduction which draws from this
• Common criticisms
  • Religion may cause violence, but the worst 20th century crimes were perpetrated by atheists.
  • Response which draws from this
  • It is absurd to think that we could ever manage without faith.
  • Response which draws from this
  • Islamic violence is due to political and economic factors, not faith.
  • Response which draws from this
  • The End of Faith is merely a stalking horse for New-Age mysticism.
  • Response which draws from this
• Summary

Laurence Boyce 18:57, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Torture

In review of the section on judicial torture in the book, the statement "In a controversial passage, he even goes so far as to argue in favour of the use of judicial torture under certain conditions" in this article seems slightly biased. In the book itself, Harris presents the situation in a series of hypothetical moral decisions and how rational and irrational responses to these compare. I would edit the sentence in the article to not make it sound what appears to me as an inaccurate review of that section. Something simple like "In one passage, he proposes the justified use of judicial torture under certain conditions." Really more of a statement that represents the philosophical question he was reviewing in the book. Maybe someone else could look at that section and agree/disagree with me? -Lt Aurum 13:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

It's controversial mainly because people like Hedges like quote-mining. [1] I don't think I have have the copy-editing skills to attempt to fix it, though. Fatalis^talk 17:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

Did nobody write in praise of the book? The criticism section section seems awfully lop-sided. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vacant Stare (talk • contribs) 18:00, August 20, 2007 (UTC).

There is various praise here.[2] If I get the chance I would change the "Criticism" section to a "Responses" section, so that some of this could be incorporated. Mackan79 18:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:The End of Faith.jpg

Image:The End of Faith.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. BetacommandBot (talk) 04:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Y Done--Svetovid (talk) 10:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)