Talk:God/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Pgallert (talk · contribs) 07:57, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Initial comments

After reading through this article I feel there are some general concerns which I will throw in right away. I have a long list of specific concerns that I will add below during the course of the week.

I foresee that a thorough review is going to take me several days (I cannot devote all day to WP). I hope that you will stay on board for longer than the usual 7 days.

General

Broadness

A quote from User:Ian.thomson on Talk:God probably best summarises this concern:

[...] Of the 13 sections of the article, 6 discuss non-Jewish Christian ideas (7 if you want to count Islamic views of Islamic understanding of Christian ideas). In contrast, Islamic ideas appear in 6 sections, Jewish ideas in 7 sections, and Hindu ideas in 5 sections, and disbelief is discussed in 4 sections. Considering 53% of the world's population belong to Abrahamic religions, it's not really all that undue [...]

I agree that this is not undue, but it is likewise not broad. Within all general topics under discussion, there should be respective representation of the main religions. Which religions to cover, and which to only link somewhere under see-also, should probably be determined by consensus. It would then still be appropriate to include particular views of minor religions in sections that specifically concern their difference, but a situation that one section covers Christianity and Islam, while another only mentions Hinduism and Shikism is not good.

The article further lacks a History section. There are plenty of sources.

Structure

The structure seems to be not entirely thought through, preventing a smooth flow of prose and confusing the reader. For instance:

• Subsections about properties (Oneness, Gender, Anthropomorphism, Existence) are spread over 3 different main sections.
• The subsection "Theism, deism and pantheism" mainly covers ontology (Existence), yet is followed by a section "Existence of God".
• The subsection "Relationship with creation" does not actually discuss this notion but rather covers the views onto the validity of respective other religions. Neither does it talk much about different ways of worship which is singled out as one of the main articles for this section.
• The hatnote restricts the article to monotheism and henotheism. It seems this has not been carried out consistently; general conceptions occur all over the article. It also might not be a good idea to restrict coverage that way, if we call "God" what X believes in, and if X' religion is a major one, then what X believes in should be covered in this article.
• The epistemology of the ontology of God should probably be covered elsewhere, as it is on an entirely different abstraction level. A short summary is fine, though.

Suggestion: It seems that the infobox {{God}} is properly structured. Would it therefore make sense to have a general structure according to the Attributes (omnipotence, existence,...), and within those sections coverage of particular religions? (Not the other way round, that's what religion should cover)

I am aware that this is essentially requesting a complete rewrite but I am willing to accompany the process as reviewer.

References

I am aware that reference requirements for GA are now less strict than even for DYK. Still, I see entire paragraphs without references, and the pattern of which propositions carry a reference, and which ones don't, is unclear to me. Per good article criteria every assertion that is "likely to be challenged" must be referenced. It is hard for me to see which ones that would be, but the current pattern makes no sense. I'll give an example for clarity:

Many medieval philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God.

This has been referenced although it is quite common knowledge and unlikely to be challenged.

However, if by its essential nature, free will is not predetermined, then the effect of its will can never be perfectly predicted by anyone, regardless of intelligence and knowledge.

This has not been referenced but would certainly be challenged by Islam.

NPOV

This is a very difficult topic; I have a concern also in this section: Which sources have been picked to create the article seems to be, for lack of a better expression, somewhat haphazard. There are frequent text patterns such as Some theologians, such as the scientist and theologian A.E. McGrath, argue, or Stephen Jay Gould proposed an approach and Another view, advanced by Richard Dawkins, is that---How have these representatives been elected? Are they the leading theologians of their time, are their views representative?

Specific

Overall

• Capitalisation of god/God is not consistent. If I understand it correctly, this article is about "God", not "god". Due to technical restrictions we cannot have two articles with only the first letter capitalised differently, but if anything needs to be split, this technical detail can be overcome with disambiguation, appropriate article titles, and hatnotes.
• Several web links have in the mean time moved or disappeared. I tagged those links ad removed a few that were of rather dubious relevance.

Lead

• God is most often conceived of as the supernatural creator - What does "most often" refer to? Which conditions would cause this not to be so?
• These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers - This statement is not repeated, or elaborated on, in the article body, against the recommendations of WP:LEAD. The sentence is further aligning views from a time span of 800 years; maybe early Christian, early Jewish, and early Muslim theologians should not be compared that way without further explanation. This is covered in the article body and does not need to be cited in the lead. (corrected 21:11, 6 March 2012 (UTC))
• and in modernity against. - This suggests that there was no attempt to disprove God's existence before a certain date and thus needs to be referenced. Also, as the linked modernity article leaves open what time span this notion covers, the wording should, at least in the article body, be more specific.

Etymology and usage

• The Germanic words for god were originally neuter—applying to both genders—but - unnecessarily difficult wording. Suggest shortening to "The Germanic words for God originally applied to both genders".

General conceptions

• There is no clear consensus on the nature of God. - The reference for this recently died. Apart from that, this sentence can mean many things (among whom?) and is too vague to be useful.
• and the Islamic concept of God - This should be explained as it is obviously one of the core topics of this article.
• Monotheists hold that there is only one god, and may claim - vague expression, why is the "may" in this sentence, and what are the conditions for this possibility?
• Thus, Muslims are not iconodules, and are not expected to visualize God. - Is "expected" the right word here? Are they not rather forbidden to do that? (If it is indeed like this, and as I have just challenged this claim, it needs a reference).
• Theism generally holds... these assertions should be connected by commas, not semicolons.
• Not all theists subscribe to all the above propositions, but usually a fair number of them, c.f., family resemblance. This sentence makes no sense to me. What does family resemblance have to do with this?
• Most theists hold that God is omnipotent [...] Some theists ascribe to God a self-conscious or - again rather vague. Try to be more specific about who claims what.
• Open Theism, by contrast, asserts that, due to the nature of time, God's omniscience does not mean the deity can predict the future - Which property of time would that be, and which physical and philosophical understanding of time is the basis of this claim?
• not in the original pantheistic sense that denies or limits persona to God. - Meaning of this claim needs to be clarified, and referened.
• The section "Other concepts" seems to cover extreme fringe views that do not need to be part of this general article.

Existence of God

• There are many philosophical issues concerning the existence of God. - If existence is to be covered, this paragraph should not avoid discussing those issues. Currently it is overly defensive and does not say anything.
• Arguments against the existence of God typically include empirical, deductive, and inductive types. Conclusions reached include: - Two of the mentioned positions are not arguments against God's existence.

Specific attributes

• Vaishnavism, a tradition in Hinduism, has list of titles and names of Krishna. - Ungrammatical. Moreover, I find it rather unlikely that they have a list; this should be worded differently.
• God who states “We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein” I doubt you can find a reliable reference that God has said that. Wherever this claim was found it should be stated "according to ..., God stated that...."
• as to how to best worship God and what is God's plan for mankind, if there is one. - The wikilink from "God's plan" is incorrect, and the wording is insensitive: It seems that only a tiny minority of believers would say that He doesn't have a plan.
• There are different approaches to reconciling the contradictory claims of monotheistic religions. - One of these claims has been mentioned, that He cannot be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent at the same time, even though this trilemma could have been deeper explored. Are there more contradictions? If yes, they should be described somewhere before this claim, if no, the sentence should not have a vague plural as exhibited.
• One view is taken by exclusivists, who believe they are Again, this is a list of fringe views. It would be much more enlightening what the major religions say about this problem.

Theological approaches

• picture subscript In Islam, it is considered a sin to anthropomorphize God - After the pictures of Muhammad drama WP editors are probably now all in the boat about this claim. For some readers this should maybe be explained a little further, along the lines of ... therefore He is depicted in a calligraphic symbol
• These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers - The sentence is aligning views from a time span of 800 years; maybe early Christian, early Jewish, and early Muslim theologians should not be compared that way without further explanation. Further, theology is not part of philosophy. The term "theologian philosopher" thus does not make sense to me.
• Many medieval philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God - Some prominent examples such as Anselm of Canterbury and Avicenna could be mentioned and linked. The sentences that follow this assertion are not statements of medieval theologians; the concept of free will was inconceivable, possibly heretic, at that time. Those statements should therefore be covered after Kant and Hume, as the section seems to follow a chronological order.
• Most major religions hold God not as a metaphor - already covered elsewhere.

Non-theistic views regarding God

• I see the relevance of both Gould and Dawkins to this debate. However, they are the last voices in a long tradition of open or disguised atheism, and to concentrate only on the two seems to be a case of recentism. Frankly, I cannot imagine how this section can exclude Kant, but for GA I would be happy about any expansion beyond the last decade. Non-theism is a bit older than 10 years.
• The same is true for anthropomorphism.

Distribution of belief in God

• map subscript: Cyprus cannot have both an Eastern Orthodox and a Muslim majority.
• Abrahamic religions beyond Christianity, Islam and Judaism include - unnecessary unless everything including the Spaghetti monster should be included here
• a few forecasts about the future of religious adherence would be nice here, the article currently ends quite abrupt.

See also

• Most of these are already linked somewhere in the article and do not need to be mentioned here again.

Notes

• too many dictionary and encyclopedia entries for my liking.
• TheFreeDictionary.com (Reference 21) does not contain any own content and is for this reason hardly suitable.
• References 4 (OED Compact Edition, G, p. 267) and 6 (Webster's New World Dictionary) are incomplete (author? ISBN? weblink? publisher?).
• Reference 12: If a piece of literature is internally linked it should work. This one doesn't.
• Reference 28 has no useful title.
• Reference 35 is incomplete. This text has an author, and the title is slightly different.

References

• Harris interactive, no bibliographical details at all
• Hastings, James Rodney, What is the purpose of this quote?

External links

• General: What do these links offer that hasn't been, or cannot be, described in the article? Any unfree media that would otherwise be lost to the reader? If the content is not important, remove the external link. If the content is important, use the external link as reference. Every external link that remains should have a somewhat logical rationale behind why it is included.
• Wikinews seems irrelevant
• Last entry (knol) is not a reliable source

This concludes my initial assessment. I put the GAN on hold to see whether any improvement is going to take place, currently it looks a bit like a fly-by nomination. If you have any questions please contact me here or on my talk page. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 21:11, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

GAN failed

Hi all, it has been nine days now without anyone improving the article in any substantial way. I fail this nomination for lack of broadness and inconsistency. --Pgallert (talk) 06:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)