Talk:Richard L. Thompson

Two references deleted
I have deleted two references given in a footnote. Reasons:

The quotation given in the first citation -- "this remarkable compendium of pseudoscience" -- refers not to FA but to another book by M. Cremo (Human Devolution, 2003). Doubtless the author cited would equally condemn FA, but she doesn't refer to it.

The second -- a letter to the editor -- doesn't directly condemn the book as "pseudoscience."Though again I have little doubt that "pseudoscience" would be the author's view, he doesn't directly say so. And compared to Murray and Groves (also cited in the footnote), the source is weak, and the author's brief comments add scant value.

Cordially, O Govinda (talk) 02:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

FA "has been widely criticised by the scientific community" (two references deleted)
Our lede says that FA "has been widely criticised by the scientific community" and supports this with a footnote saying "For example:" and listing several works.

From that list, I have deleted two works -- an article by Brown and one by Nanda -- because they don't support what they're cited for.

The Brown article mentions FA only in one sentence, and that sentence offers no criticism and says nothing about criticism by the scientific community.

The Nanda article, too, says nothing about criticism by the scientific community, it mentions FA only once, in passing, and offers no specific criticism of FA.

Another work in the list -- Numbers 2006 -- is problematic. The ISBN led me to an edition in which the cited page numbers don't exist. I'd rather not just delete the reference. Could someone here find the relevant text and fix the reference?

The citation to The Counter-Creationism Handbook is also problematic. The cited reference also says nothing about criticism by the scientific community. Nothing I could find about the author, Marc Isaak, indicates that he is a scientist. And this is the entire content of the book's criticism of FA:

"1. Cremo and Thompson supported their claim with Vedic scripture. They claimed scientific support for it, but the science they cited was old and discredited.

"2. More seriously, Cremo and Thompson were selective in what they cited. The vast majority of evidence shows that hominids have developed more or less gradually over the past 6 or more million years and that modern humans are much younger (Tattersall 1995.)."

This reads to me more like "talking points for anti-creationists" than evidence of serious "criticism by the scientific community." And (1) has the disadvantage of being untrue. The book is so very silent about Vedic scripture that Colin Graves, in his negative review of FA, complains that C & T "avoid talking about the religious content of their perspective." Graves's review also acknowledges that not all the material is old. Nor discredited.

Does anyone wish to stand up for keeping the citation to The Counter-Creationism Handbook?

Cordially, O Govinda (talk) 15:08, 8 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Unless someone wants to stand up for citing Numbers's book, I am going to delete the citation to it. The book (in hardcover) was first released in 1992, and I seriously doubt that it criticizes FA (first published in 1993). -- Cordially, O Govinda (talk) 15:38, 8 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I was too quick. Apparently Numbers came out with an updated Second Edition of his book. So it may likely refer to FA after all. In which case what we still need is an accurate citation for it. Cordially, O Govinda (talk) 15:47, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of material about the content of "Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science"
IRWolfie-: Perhaps before making such a large-scale deletion of material another editor has worked hard on, you might consider the more collegial and less abrasive approach of first putting the matter up for discussion.

It's not clear to me why a chapter contributed by an eminent scholar to a volume edited by another reputable scholar should be dismissed as "unreliable." Could you explain? And would you regard such a judgment -- "unreliable" -- as "uncontroversial" and unworthy of prior discussion?

It's also not clear to me why the label "creationist" (is that meant to be tantamount to "intellectual leper"?) should be enough to automatically disqualify the writings of a professor emeritus of philosophy with a CV as long as my arm. Do you believe that anyone to whom you can attach that label is automatically an unreliable source?

That apart: In context, what Dr. Bakar's views might be about the creation of the universe strikes me as irrelevant. Nothing in the material you've deleted expresses Dr. Bakar's personal opinions about that matter (or any other). Rather, the material gives a neutral summary -- no value judgments expressed -- of one of Thompson's arguments. Do you suppose that this professor of philosophy's theological persuasions render him unfit to objectively summarize such an argument?

Finally, do you feel that in an article about a mathematician with views influenced by a religious perspective, we best serve the reader by obliterating from the article any neutral expression of what his views might be?

Thanks for the tip about the Wikipedia convention on the use of "Dr."

Cordially, O Govinda (talk) 17:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The article you are quoting from is part of a creationist piece. It is not a reliable source WP:RS, and this is undue weight WP:WEIGHT, IRWolfie- (talk) 20:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Hundreds of millions seems to be what Forbidden Archeology is suggesting
Billions is suggested in fact, although only once.. And you can't dismiss what Cremo says about a book he co-authored, eg "presence going That far back in time. In our book 'Forbidden Archeology,' my coauthor Rchard L Thompson (Sadaputa Dasa) and I documented extensive evidence. In the form of human skeletons, human footprints and human artifacts, showng that humans Hke ourselves have inhabited the earth for hundreds of mllions of years, just as the Puranas tell us. This evidence is not very well known because of a process of knowledge filtration that operates in the scientific world. Evidence that contradicts the Darwinian theory of human evolution is set aside, ignored, and eventually forgotten."|billions&hl=en&sa=X&ei=c91fUrvWNOaD4ATN6YGwBA&ved=0CF8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22forbidden%20archeology%22%20billion|billions&f=false. Dougweller (talk) 13:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)


 * For a comprehensive discussion of this issue, please review the Wikipedia article talk page for Forbidden Archeology at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Forbidden_Archeology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.131.70.204 (talk) 18:34, 19 June 2014 (UTC)