Talk:Atheism

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I moved this discussion here.

"hi Gio,

You're right - that quote was/is redundant, which I never noticed because I never read the whole article. Which speaks to the underlying problem that this article needs to be shortened way down, and re-structured so that it is from the Christian perspective throughout. Would you like to have a go at that? My vote is that however we restructure it, we keep that quote near the front, because it "says it all" about the Christian perspective. Mike Mrd 19:53, 10 January 2006 (EST)

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Yes, the article is a bit long and could be shortened. I'll try to do that. I disagree that the one quote "says it all." The Christian perspective is detailed at lenght (reason why its long), and it does this to the exclusion of the Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, etc., perspectives. A Christian perspective does not mean dumming it down so that there is no almost no information about the topic in question, which defeats the purpose of this as a site for knowlege on a subject matter, albeit from a Christian perspective. It may not be perspective-neutral but its not simple-minded, either; being Christian and being knowegable, educated are not mutually exclusive. Gio 20:29, 10 January 2006 (EST)

Fair comment - that quote does not say it all. I would like to see, in the article, a significant Christian perspective, whether "detailed at length" or not. The current Christian perspective is only one paragraph, with the quote from Psalms and a quote from John of questionable relevance. The remainder of the "Christianity" section is about a weird God-is-dead theory from the 1970s. I suggest that we symmarize the Atheism typology, give a reference to wikipedia for the full discussion of Atheism in all its forms, and devote our energy to understanding:

• how atheism is handled in the Bible (I think the Biblical writers encountered false gods more that atheism),
• how atheism was handled by the church over the years (not always creatively I suspect),
• how atheism and atheistic philosophies threaten the church (if they do) and
• how Christians can respond to atheism.

Now that would be a big article. So maybe a subset of it? Mike Mrd 13:35, 11 January 2006 (EST)

This article

Frankly, I think this is a candidate for deletion. It is obviously copied from elsewhere. Although the style is excellent, the consistent bent towards NPOV voids the purpose of Theopedia. Even worse, at times it seems to lean more than a little in favor of atheism (e.g. calling theism's so-called sin problem "atheism's killer argument"). It would be far better to write an article friendly to our own purposes than to feature much information in a form that is latently or blatantly antagonistic to our purpose. I don't see how this article could strengthen someone's faith. --Alex Woehr 13:28, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for removing it, Jordan Barrett. --Alex Woehr 17:14, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Well I took a stab at it

I consider myself more of an editor than a writer, so please take a look at this and see if it's correct in tone and intent.Bernardo Mora 02:18, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

FYI, there used to be a 60,000+ character (10 pages or so) article which apparently was borrowed from somewhere else. Jordan already removed the bulk of it before your change. I should have deleted my request (or else Jordan should have affirmed that). This should explain why my note above was so heavy with indictment of the previous article. --Alex Woehr 17:14, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, sorry. I should have made a note. Jordan Barrett (talk) 04:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)