Talk:Pandeism/Archive 5

Chinese materials.
Well this, I must confess, is a first -- the deletion of direct quotes from published secondary sources under the rubric of "removed chinese stuff, looks like WP:OR." This seems like a kneejerk, borderline racist response (especially given that the editor didn't even bother with the appropriate capitalization of Chinese). So let's straighten this out. In Mandarin Chinese, the translation of "Pandeism" is 泛自然神論 (traditional) or 泛自然神论 (simplified), (pinyinized as fànzìránshénlùn). Now, we have three separate sources referenced here, each of which fairly ought to be considered individually, yes? (lest we be guilty of making sweeping generalizations):

The first is this:

In China, Zhang Dao Kui (张道葵) of the China Three Gorges University proposed that the art of the Three Gorges area is influenced by "a representation of the romantic essence that is created when integrating rugged simplicity with the natural beauty spoken about by pandeism."

Here the thing simply speaks for itself. The work is a published secondary source. The text is a direct quote from that source. No "original" research.

The second is this:

Pandeism has been described as embodying "a major feature of Chinese philosophical thought," in that "there is a harmony between man and the divine, and they are equal."

I confess that I neglected to include the author here. Now this information has been added. This is a published work, a secondary source, and the text is a direct quote from the secondary source.

The third is this:

Author Wang Junkang (王俊康) has noted that, in Chinese folk religion as conveyed in the early novels of noted folk writer Ye Mei (叶梅), "the romantic spirit of Pandeism can be seen everywhere." Pandeism is extolled in these settings through "the worship of reproduction under Pandeism, as demonstrated in romantic songs sung by village people to show the strong impulse of vitality and humanity and the beauty of wildness."

Now the exclusion of this one is so baffling that I have no moral choice but to put it right back in, concededly with some improvement to the sourcing. Wang Junkang is a noted Chinese literary critic, with works included in the Hathi Trust library. Ye Mei is an equally noted folk author, and this is Wang Junkgang's literary criticism of Ye Mei, indisputably a secondary source, wherein Wang Junkang repeatedly comments upon the themes of Pandeism in Ye Mei's writing. This is the very definition of NOT original research. I will grant that since Ye Mei is a writer of this past century, this was technically in the wrong section and ought not have been included with the rest in the ancient world section. And I grant that lumping it there likely gave an impression of improper conflation. But since there was no effort to claim that these three sources imply some collective attribute beyond each standing on its own, there is no synthesis, and so, no, there is no original research. DeistCosmos (talk) 18:27, 5 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Please do not readd material until a discussion has taken place and consensus is achieved. See WP:BRD.
 * Please do not accuse other editors of racism, see WP:AGF and WP:NPA.
 * Please provide a reliable source for the translated text. TippyGoomba (talk) 03:29, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * We have been through this before -- Talk:Pandeism/Archive 2 -- where I pointed out to you that Verifiability expressly permits "translations by Wikipedians"; there is no requirement for me or anybody to provide any source for the translated text. I find it very hard to assume 'good faith' when that would require me to assume that you have forgotten your own prior admonishment and withdrawal of objection on this very topic due to this very policy. And so, either your character or your competence is brought into question. And as to the implication of racism, it's not a great leap, with a user name including ethnic slur 'goomba' and your seeming desire to attack a minority theological perspective and especially to attack that which you perceive as 'foreign' within it. Since your objection is clearly contrary to policy, as you have already acknowledged in the previous matter, then yes I am absolutely entitled to undo your counter-policy damage. Which by the way was never "re-adding" material in the first place since I the material was different once I had adjusted the referencing to answer the initial erroneous charge. And by the way, I have asked a Chinese-speaking administrator to review this discussion. DeistCosmos (talk) 04:12, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, and try not to forget that since you're the one complaining to keep referenced material out, you're the one who needs to show a consensus to that end. No consensus, it goes back in. DeistCosmos (talk) 04:19, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't recall a single bit of our previous interaction. Having a Chinese-speaking editor involved is a good idea. The OR issue I'm having is the mapping of some Chinese word to "pandeism", I'm not sure what mechanism I should use to verify this and I don't know what is usual under these circumstances. It looks like you got me pinned on the racism though, Goombas are an inferior race that should be wiped from the mushroom kingdom. TippyGoomba (talk) 05:48, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with the sources. Per WP:NONENG, we are permitted to use non-English sources in the case where English references on the topic are non-existent. The print reference sources listed above do count as reputable sources. -- benlisquare T•C•E 06:36, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Are you able to verify the translation? Particularly what's being translated as "pandeism"? My concern is that pandeism may be a neologism and that the translation may not have been done faithfully. TippyGoomba (talk) 07:07, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * It is a faithful translation, according to the Chinese Wikipedia (zh:泛自然神論) or according to CEDICT (screenshot). Of course, the Chinese term has a different etymology (it literally means "Pan-natural-god-theory"), but dictionaries do translate 泛自然神論 as "Pandeism". zh:自然神論 means deism, and "泛" is a "pan-" prefix, so it matches with the neologism when you break down its word roots. -- benlisquare T•C•E 08:34, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * @User:TippyGoomba, I'm glad you maintain good humour about the whole thing. But I do wish you'd recalled our earlier exchange, perhaps it would have saved some time? But I'm still a bit perplexed as to how "pandeism may be a neologism" when citations in the article point to its German origin two and a quarter+ centuries ago; and Weinstein's book published over a century ago (at last publicly available on the Internet, and 'fast-tracked' by Project Guternberg as a high-priority project) spends thirty pages detailing pandeism. Not to mention Charles Harteshorne analysing it, in English, in the 1940s.
 * And @User:Benlisquare, I thank you so much for your participation here, and your contribution of expertise, both linguistic and as to WP:V. Perhaps it may help if I explain the proceedings by which we got here. An IP added a few words about Pandeism being of some special significance in China's Three Gorges region. I took this out, smushed as it was into a sentence sourced to Weinstein, but not part of anything Weinstein had written. But I was intrigued, so I reviewed Chinese Wikipedia's corresponding page, "泛自然神論." Nothing there about Three Gorges. And so I googled that and found lots and lots of pages, including the MDBG dictionary page (MDBG is the maintainer of the highly regarded Chinese-English translation dictionary CC-CEDICT.) MDBG, then, provides definition "泛自然神論: pandeism, theological theory that God created the Universe and became one with it." So with that, I searched for printed publications including the word "泛自然神論" and found a handful. (as you know some Chinese characters have a 'traditional' form and a 'simplified' form, which mean the same thing, much like writing the same English word in a fancy font or a plain font, so searches for "泛自然神論" provide hits for the simplified form, "泛自然神论.")
 * So I took that handful of published results and first tried Google translate, which gave me a mix of sensible material and complete gibberish, and so when I next happened to visit some Chinese friends, native speakers/readers of the language, they quite helpfully corrected those translations from the original source materials, and provided substance to be added both here and at that Chinese Wikipedia page. CEDICT was published in 1998, and I have cited sources from 2001 and 2002, so perhaps they reflect CEDICT's definition, or perhaps they all come from some point earlier still, but in my humble opinion all of them goes a bit too far back to consider "泛自然神論" a neologism either.
 * And so I would, with all due respect, request of User:TippyGoomba that in light of all this, you please restore the content (you can put the Ye Mei criticism where I put it the second time, and put the Zhang Dao Kui and Wen Chi quotes where I originally had them, under the ancient world portion.) Blessings!! DeistCosmos (talk) 18:49, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I took TippyGoomba's neologism remark for granted; I'm not familiar with religion-related topics in the first place. Perhaps a better wording would have been "it matches with the word". What I intended to say is that the Chinese phrase matches the English term. -- benlisquare T•C•E 18:57, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * My apologies, that was essentially directed to TippyGoomba. But I'll be the first to confess that this is an often abstract and esoteric field, not widely discussed outside the rare air of philosophers of highly hypothetical theology. I'm reminded of Einstein's comment that really there were only three men in the world who actually understood his theory (and sometimes he himself was not sure he was one of them!!) But thank you again, a great deal, for reviewing and settling the prime points of this dispute. DeistCosmos (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Your explanation was clear, thank you for taking the time to look at this. I'm satisfied. TippyGoomba (talk) 03:22, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * @User:TippyGoomba: My apologies as well for casting aspersions. I misunderstood your rejection of the materials as a judgment on their Chinese origin, instead of a question as to the translations. Thank you for reversing the removal. You're not such a bad egg after all. :) DeistCosmos (talk) 05:08, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Reconsideration of the Robert G. Brown materials
I would like some reconsideration of the Robert G. Brown materials removed from this page at an earlier time -- Talk:Pandeism/Archive 2. The argument then made was that these were self published materials, but I have since then been informed that self published materials are permissible if they are from somebody who is an expert in the field, which I would contend that a PhD physics professor by definition is when it comes to physics. In this instance, Professor Brown's proof regarding Pandeism is an exercise in physics, so I believe that that exception to self publication ought apply. DeistCosmos (talk) 04:21, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
 * If you're going to reference policy, please quote it directly and provide links. I take it you're referring to WP:UGC, specifically (emphasis theirs):
 * Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications. Self-published information should never be used as a source about a living person, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer; see WP:BLP.
 * What field is this? Physics? Do you see "proofs of god" in physics journals? TippyGoomba (talk) 04:41, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Didn't Stephen Hawking write a book not long ago claiming that his physics formulas dispensed with the need for a deity? Had Hawking instead written that on his webpage, or in a blog post, would it not be includable at Atheism for example? The policy which you've most kindly quoted seems most concerned with not using such sources "about a living person." DeistCosmos (talk) 22:01, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. No. It's a paragraph of two sentences, only the first of which is relevant in this context. TippyGoomba (talk) 02:15, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Here is the CV of our Dr. Robert G. Brown (a bit out of date, but that ought not matter for this purpose)-- indisputably he evinces a number of publications in a number of physics journals, and so I would put it to you that his asserted proof that principles of physics dictate the pandeistic nature of any omniscient deity is as susceptible to a line or two on this page as a blog post by Stephen Hawking or Timothy Ferris or Brian Greene would be on the subject. Once sufficient expertise in the field is established, do we look to the level of celebrity as well? DeistCosmos (talk) 03:38, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know what field might be relevant, maybe theology. Certainly not physics. You should query at WP:RS/N to gather more opinions, if you think I'm mistaken. TippyGoomba (talk) 04:09, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I will look into Professor Brown further first to see if I can find some indication of a publication history in theology, which may moot the question of expertise in a field. But on that same score, I have been reconsidering my previous objection to the criticism pressed by Pastor Bob Burridge (whose own CV presents squarely theological expertise). The criticism by that Oakes person is not worth mention, because he essentially declares himself to known nothing of Pandeism, and then shows it. But Burridge makes, I think, a fair point in discerning an incompatibility between Pandeism and the Christian notion of sin. And so I would restore the following: in 1996, Pastor Bob Burridge of the Geneven Institute for Reformed Studies wrote that: "If God was the proximate cause of every act it would make all events to be "God in motion". That is nothing less than pantheism, or more exactly, pandeism." Burridge rejects this model, observing that in Christianity, "The Creator is distinct from his creation. The reality of secondary causes is what separates Christian theism from pandeism." Burridge concludes by challenging that "calling God the author of sin demand[s] a pandeistic understanding of the universe effectively removing the reality of sin and moral law." If theological expertise is the watchword, I find I must withdraw my opposition to criticism leveled by such an expert, no? DeistCosmos (talk) 04:51, 14 September 2013 (UTC)