Jump to content

Talk:Daniel Came

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meeting WP:PROF[edit]

SmokeyJoe queries whether the subject of this page meets WP:PROF and says 'Please use the talk page to show the three best sources for demonstrating notability.' In my judgment Daniel Came meets criterion 7. 'The person has had a substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity'. I am happy to defer to SmokeyJoe on this, being relatively unexperienced on Wikipedia (I have not contributed to a discussion on a talk page previously either, so please accept my apologies if I am getting any customs wrong!) The three best sources I have to demonstrate that the subject meets criterion 7. for WP:PROF are:

1. 2011 National news coverage of Daniel Came's criticism of Richard Dawkins in The Daily Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Dawkins-accused-of-cowardice-for-refusing-to-debate-existence-of-God.html 2. 2011 National news coverage of the same event in Peter Hitchen's blog for The Mail On Sunday: https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2011/10/an-evening-without-richard-dawkins.html 3. 2017 public debate between Daniel Came and William Lane Craig with 38,244 YouTube views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLbnrurMgYM

SmokeyJoe points out that source 2. is a blog. However, it is a blog in a national newspaper by one of the most well known journalists in the UK, which may mean that it still provides substantial evidence of notability (again, I defer to SmokeyJoe on this).Kyrilo Tchaikovsky (talk) 15:13, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]


  • WP:PROF #7 reads "The person has had a substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity."

Kyrilo Tchaikovsky offers as evidence:

1. 2011 National news coverage of Daniel Came's criticism of Richard Dawkins in The Daily Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Dawkins-accused-of-cowardice-for-refusing-to-debate-existence-of-God.html
2. 2011 National news coverage of the same event in Peter Hitchen's blog for The Mail On Sunday: https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2011/10/an-evening-without-richard-dawkins.html
3. 2017 public debate between Daniel Came and William Lane Craig with 38,244 YouTube views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLbnrurMgYM
Reponses:
1. Can you please provide quotes from this article that comment on Daniel Came?
2. blog. Is it a special blog? Yes, the blogger, Peter Hitchens, is notable (has a Wikipedia biography), so I say "pass".
3. Youtube. Youtube hits never count. Show us instead others commenting on the debate, or commenting on the debate views.
--SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:12, 10 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Responses to SmokeyJoe
Thanks for the time you have given to this.
1. Certainly,'Four invitations to take part in public debates were sent to Prof Dawkins from The British Humanist Association, The Cambridge Debating Union, the Oxford Christian Union and Premier Radio. Prof Dawkins declined them all... Some of Prof Dawkins’s contemporaries are not impressed. Dr Daniel Came, a philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist, from Worcester College, Oxford, wrote to him urging him to reconsider his refusal to debate the existence of God with Prof Craig. In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part. “I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights like Pastor Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor Keenan Roberts of the Colorado Hell House.”' The accusation of 'cowardice' in the title of the article also refers to Came's letter. Came is also mentioned in coverage by The Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/paul-vallely-god-knows-why-dawkins-won-t-show-2374659.html and by Fox News: https://www.foxnews.com/us/christian-philosopher-william-lane-craig-is-ready-to-debate-but-finds-few-challengers
2. Acknowledged.
3. Articles on the event appear in Trinity News http://trinitynews.ie/2017/03/does-god-exist/ and at Patheos https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2019/01/the-argument-from-mathematics-doesnt-add-up-to-god-2-of-2-2/ (another blog, though one with an enormous readership & over 300 comments on this piece alone).
As above, I defer to SmokeyJoe's judgment. Perhaps it is a borderline case. Kyrilo Tchaikovsky (talk) 12:13, 10 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:Kyrilo Tchaikovsky, in #1, I highlighted the only comment about Daniel Came. Please note, I ask for commentary on Danial Came, please do not include any comment by Daniel Came SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:49, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Similarly in [1] and [2], can you do the work for me, which is the same work as required for building on the biography, which is to extract commentary on Daniel Came, and do not include facts, or comment by Daniel Came. Wikipedia is about what others have written about the subject, it is not about what the subject has written.
going back to PROF#7, which does look for impact, evidence of impact is not readership, but others commenting on the level of readership. Eg the number 38,244. Is that a large number, and who says so? Has it been compared with cat videos? Has it been compared to views on other atheist philosophers who already have Wikipedia articles?
Note that these things testing for sufficient notability to have a Wikipedia biography go straight to things that can be included as content in the biography, and it has to be stuff published by others, not derived from the subject himself. SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:57, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is a borderline case. SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:59, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SmokeyJoe asks 'In [3] and [4], can you do the work for me, which is the same work as required for building on the biography, which is to extract commentary on Daniel Came.'
The first of these, [5] introduces the subject as follows: 'Dr Daniel Came is a lecturer in Philosophy at Hull University in England, with B.A. and M.Phil. degrees in philosophy from the University of Cambridge and a D.Phil from Oxford University. He has a special interest in Nietzsche (of the ‘God is dead’ variety) and other post-Kantian German philosophies.' It proceeds to report his view e.g. 'does God exist? Apparently, in Dr Daniel Came’s view, there’s a three-quarter chance he doesn’t'; 'Dr Came made an interesting formula of sorts, claiming that a natural “evil”, such as a tsunami, has one of 4 possibilities: lead to a greater good, lead to a good which is less than the evil, be neutralised by a good of equal amounts or have no good come of it at all. Only the first of these outcomes is consistent with the philosophy of an all-loving God, and as the outcomes may be beyond our comprehension or perception, we can only assume that there is a one-quarter chance that God exists'; 'a standout theme of the event was the legitimacy and respect the opposition gave to each other during the debate. In fact, one of the features of Dr Came’s introduction was the mention of his recent criticism on the lack of academic standing and name-calling between atheists and theists in modern debating.' (I assume here that an article by another author reporting the subject of a Wikipedia article's views counts as them commenting on the subject.)
The second, [6], introduces Came in the passage: 'Craig's antagonist in this discussion, Dr. Daniel Came, raised many points I've mentioned here. About math's applicability he said...'. There follows I quotation from Came which I ommit since I understand that being quoted is not evidence of impact. Other reference to Came is implicit.
SmokeyJoe also says 'the number 38,244. Is that a large number, and who says so? Has it been compared with cat videos? Has it been compared to views on other atheist philosophers who already have Wikipedia articles?'
I take the point, and am grateful for the clarification. I think anyone in academic philosophy would know that this is a large number for such a video, but I am not aware of any source commenting on this. Kyrilo Tchaikovsky (talk) 15:28, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion[edit]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:53, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]