Talk:Militant atheism/Archive 10

Attempts to overturn consensus
There has recently been a concerted campaign to try to overthrow the consensus that this should be a redirect to League of Militant Atheists. At least some of the accounts trying to overturn consensus are sockpuppets. I am currently holding back from blocking the sockpuppets, in the hope of getting clearer evidence exactly which of them should be blocked. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 17:00, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I see... However, are you talking about this AfD discussion? It looks like the discussion was about transforming a disambig. page to a redirect ("Fails WP:DAB. ...You can't have a disambig page for one entry", according to the nominator), not about actual deletion of the content page. Am I missing something? My very best wishes (talk) 19:08, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The SPI/checkuser investigation has now been completed, and a large number of the accounts that have been attempting to alter the redirect have been blocked as sockpuppets. Link. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:25, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Great. The AfD discussion was clearly about transforming a disambig. page to a redirect, however it was used to delete the content page. I think this can be a reason for bringing this page to WP:DRV (improper deletion), however I am not interested in this. My very best wishes (talk) 14:24, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Why are you discussing something you aren't interested in? Your summary of the dispute ignores that the same content was deleted prior to becoming a dab.  Of course, you knew that. Viriditas (talk) 20:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Actual article content
(1) I was accused that I restored the version of article from conservapedia. This is not true. In conservapedia, the recent article content was copied verbatim from Wikipedia on September 29 2011. While in wikipedia I see gradual evolution at least since 2010. -M.Altenmann >t 17:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

(2) I looked thru talk page history, including RFC. The following major arguments: These arguments are valid only partially and only in the context of the article as it stood.
 * (A)The term "militant atheism", just like "fine food", is debatable and poorly defined (other comparisons include damn Yankees, fucking annoying atheism, etc.)
 * (B) Split into two articles: Militant atheism (state atheism) and Militant atheism (new atheism)
 * (C) This article conflates two different concepts. We don't need an extensive article which rehashes the particulars of state atheism and new atheism.
 * (D) There seems to be little evidence that this is anything beyond synthesis - a common phrase used in very different contexts, 
 * (E) Yes, the phrase looks like just a word collocation: "militant"+"atheism". Yes, the phrase has been used recently in an indiscriminate way. But this does not change the fact that in the history there has been a specific meaning of the term. The correct analogy for "militant atheism" is "acute kidney injury" For a person not versed in medicine the latter term is a mere collocation: "poor guy drank tooo much booze, hurt his kidney badly". As for "recentism" issue, compare with this: in the War in Donbass the separatists call Ukrainian government "facsists" and Ukr Govt call them "terrorists". Regardless whether they are correct or not, we are not going to disambiguate "fascist" with Government of Ukraine nor we are going to write a new article Fascism (Ukraine). Nevertheless, there is a historical concept of "militant atheism", kinda "acute pancreatitis" which, unlike fine food deserves a wikipedia article.
 * (F) the current redirect to League of Militant Atheists is a slight misnomer: It is not true that the "MiAts" are those who are the members of the league. e.e., term "MA" is not secondary to "LoMA". In fact the opposite is true, the League was named in reference of the pre-existing political term "MA", prominent in Bolshevist ideology. In fact the current article title "League of Militant Atheists" is a subtlety lost in translation. The correct translation is "Union of the Godless". I am sure you know that "Godless" is an insult (and I guess this is a reason the title was not chosen for NPOV reasons). But this was the whole point why the name was chosen: for the same reasons as Dykes on Bikes named themselves: to re-appropriate the insult. And for those who know better, "League of Militant Atheists" sounds as silly as "Lesbians on Motorcycles". -M.Altenmann >t 17:35, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Therefore I suggest to write the article about the historical meaning of the term. In fact, I was busy cleaning the current article of irrelevant stuff. I agree that the article as it stood was an arbitrary conflation and WP:SYNTH. I somewhat expanded the historical part and proceeded to major cleanup. I managed to delete 100% of "New Atheism" out of it and was on my way of gradually removing the "State atheism" content when I got myself blocked. -M.Altenmann >t 17:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * You'll need to start a new RfC before doing anything. Viriditas (talk) 20:27, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Altenmann, you actually will not be able to edit this page, because it has been full protected, and will remain so until such time as a new RfC decides otherwise. My advice, if you feel strongly about this, is to create a draft page in your user space, and then ask here when you feel that it is ready to move out of user space. But, given the past consensus, you should expect a difficult discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:19, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * You both misunderstood me. I am asking for discussion before starting an article. If you two are fed up with discussions here, I don't mind. I don't care about past consensus because it was for the past article, which, if you bothered to read what I wrote, I agree was 85% irrelevant. No, I don't feel strongly about it; I feel sure about it. But it can wait until I have time to fetch proper sources. -M.Altenmann >t 07:58, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Wrong redirect
This redirect is ridiculous. It's pretty clear that there should be a disambiguation page explicitly stating what militant atheism may refer to as it is in the standard template. --89.74.113.94 (talk) 15:32, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 9 March 2017
This should be a disambiguation page, as the term in modern usage is a synonym for New atheism (evangelical atheism).e.g. Salon: "Has militant atheism become a religion?". A century ago, it referred to the League of Militant Atheists in Soviet Russia. I therefore suggest we replace the current redirect as follows:

Militant atheism may mean:


 * League of Militant Atheists, an antireligious organisation in Soviet Russia founded in 1925
 * New atheism, a 21st century movement actively opposing religion as irrationalism Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:56, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Articles for deletion/Militant atheism while five years old shows some opposition to having a dab here. Has anything changed in the meantime? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:25, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * 1) The phrase is now widely used as a synonym for New atheism, the ongoing movement; this may perhaps have been less obviously true five years ago, and there is no sign in the old AfD that the option of simply renaming was actually considered.
 * 2) The old AfD was uncomfortable about using the title "Militant atheism" for anything except the century-old Russian organisation, in what looks very much like partisanship. The New atheism article would in fact be well named "Militant atheism" were it not for the dispute about that title five years ago, but we don't have to go there now. At the very least, "Militant atheism" has two meanings, which is all we need to create a dab page. The current straight redirect denies a major - I'd say easily the most common - use of the term, which is simply wrong. It's time we admitted that more than one meaning exists, so in that sense, yes, something has certainly changed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:52, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I have mixed feelings about this proposal. On the one hand, it is true that most readers would want to have this take them to the New atheism article. On the other hand, it is not really a synonym for New atheism, so much as a pejorative framing of it that is used by its detractors. There probably ought to be a new RfC before acting on this. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:23, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I suspect that Dawkins and co are just as willing to wear it as a badge of honour as their opponents are to use it as a label, so it might be positive, negative, or (for many readers) neutral. However, it seems quite wrong that there's no indication that the topic is, as a matter of practical fact, covered by the New atheism article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:01, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * There is already a hatnote which includes New atheism at the top of the page this redirects to. Mojoworker (talk) 20:04, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I have disabled the request as discussion is continuing. Which meaning do editors feel is the "primary topic" for this term? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:24, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * To inform the selection of "primary topic" if that's what's needed (I'd say it wasn't, a dab page can be neutral on that question):
 * League of Militant Atheists gets c. 25,000 hits
 * new atheism gets c. 146,000 hits. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:38, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * If there is a primary topic then guidelines say that there should not be a dab page. Just redirect and use a hatnote on the primary topic article. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:46, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That's to be determined. Right now it looks as if League of Militant Atheists has been wrongly determined to be the primary topic. If so, then either New atheism should get a hat and the redirect should point there, or we need a dab page. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:58, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I would echo 's "low enthusiasm for doing that" at Talk:Militant atheism/Archive 9 from the last time this was suggested in 2015. This has been rehashed many times over in the archives. Mojoworker (talk) 20:12, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, this isn't what people want, let's drop that stick. I'll start a new section below for the simpler proposal, to change the primary target. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:25, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

CLOSED

Proposal to change the primary target to "New atheism"
The current primary target for this redirect is the century-old League of Militant Atheists. However, current usage favours New atheism. Google hits are as follows:
 * League of Militant Atheists gets c. 25,000 hits
 * new atheism gets c. 146,000 hits.

I therefore propose that the redirect should point to New atheism, an article which describes "militant" or "evangelical atheism". Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:25, 10 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Strong oppose. I was slightly open to a dab, above. But for the reasons that I said above, this proposal is something that I would strongly oppose. We can speculate about the degree to which the New atheists, collectively, would or would not accept "militant" as a badge of honor, but the fact remains that the term is used pejoratively by opponents of atheists. They do that a lot, and thus the search results. This would be like redirecting "superstition" to "religion", and just as objectionable. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:33, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, I see there are strong illogical feelings here. Let's forget it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:15, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Nothing personal, just what I think is the right editorial decision. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:07, 11 March 2017 (UTC)