[WikiEN-l] NPOV, history and religion. Its coming together.

Sat Jul 17 14:23:29 UTC 2004

Fred Bauder writes:
> really don't know how to resolve this problem which I see
> as being quite difficult to resolve. For example, I
believe 
> (without doing a lot of research on the question) there 
> is no evidence from Egyptian sources of the existence of 
> Moses, or Joseph either. How do we deal with this and 
> what significance does it have?

This is an excellent question, important for Wikipedia to
deal with. (This issue itself is important, but by
extension, covers many related issues.) 

I agree with your solution. We use NPOV phrasing to discuss
this problem, in the way you suggest. 

Below I offer my ideas for an addition to the NPOV article,
and I would like you (Fred), Steve Rubenstein, and others
to respond. If you are responding about Wikipedia NPOV
policy vis-a-vis history, I guess your reply should be sent
here (to the Wiki-En list). If your reply is specific to
that of the Hebrew Bible and history, then I guess you
should reply to: [[Talk:The Bible and history]]

> rest of Fred's message deleted to save space; I agree
with him.

Here is my proposed text, for use in Wikipedia:WikiProject
articles on religion, and perhaps in the NPOV article
itself.

* Wikipedia's [[NPOV]] policy often means multiple points
of view. This means providing not only the points of view
of different groups today, but different groups in the
past.

*Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. One important task for
articles is to explain things. In the case of human beliefs
and practices, explanation encompasses not only what
motivates individuals who hold these beliefs and practices,
but an account of how such beliefs and practices came to be
and took shape. 

*Wikipedia articles on history and religion draw from a
religion's sacred texts. But Wikipedia articles on history
and religion also draw from modern archaeological,
historical and scientific sources

*Many adherents of a religion will object to a critical
historical treatments, claiming that this discriminates
against their religious beliefs. They would prefer that the
articles describe their faith as they see it, which is from
an ahistorical perspective (e.g. the way things are is the
way things have always been; any differences are from
heretical sects that don't represent the real religion.)
This point of view must also be mentioned, yet note that
there is no contradiction. NPOV policy means that we say
that Group A says one thing for somesuch reasons, while
group B says another thing for other reasons.

*A note on using the term "fundamentalism". Please see the
article on [[fundamentalism]] for the technical definition
of this term. This word is used in articles on religion,
but should only be used in one its technical senses. We
should take care to explain what we mean by this term so
(a) as not to cause unnecessary offense, and (b) so as not
to mislead the reader (most people being unaware of how
this word should be used.) We should not use this term as a
pejorative phrase.

Shalom,

Robert (RK)

=====
"No one is poor except he who lacks knowledge....A person who has knowledge has everything.  A person who lacks knowledge, what has he? Once a person acquires knowledge, what does he lack?  [Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim, 41a]

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