Talk:Supernatural/Archive 1

This discussion was the talk page for Supernaturalization, a title that now redirects to Supernatural.

Lest it escape the notice of interested persons, I added the deleted material from Creeping supernaturalization to this article. Mkmcconn

Jacquerie27, the newest material on the resurrection is highly speculative. It's not in character with your previous contributions to the article, and very disappointing in that light. Mkmcconn \


 * The difference is: Supernaturalization defined as a process, is made clear by all of the previous examples you posted. Given certain assumptions, observations can be made from given data, which illustrate the incorporation of supernatural elements into later material.  This is not speculative, although it is not conclusive, because it is based on an independent (as may be presumed) hypotheses concerning the dating of the text.  It is taken for granted, for the purposes of the argument, that the dating of the text is not tautologically settled upon, by a speculative presumption that supernaturalism is itself an indication of a later date for the text.Mkmcconn \


 * However, the latest material that you have added does not follow this procedure, because it fails to conform to the definition you have provided. It ddoes not fit the standard of falsifiability that you provided yourself.  Instead, it actively seeks an alternative explanation, a reinterpretation according to the naturalistic POV.  Mkmcconn \


 * It develops the argument of the earlier material on the resurrection, and I know it's a reinterpretation: of the traditional supernatural claim. The traditional supernatural claim can no longer be tested, but the modern naturalistic claim can be, because we can examine modern religions whose prophecies fail, as Leon Festinger did. The traditional Xtian argument that the disciples must have had good evidence or they would never have sacrificed their lives for the resurrection no longer stands up, because the failure of a prophecy can make people even more convinced of the truth of their beliefs -- as Festinger showed. There's also the example of Elvis Presley (et al). People saw him "alive" after his death. Before modern technology, those claims could easily have formed the basis of a new religion. Maybe they still will. Jacquerie27 21:51 May 10, 2003 (UTC)


 * J. it is a marvel to me that you say that the past cannot be tested, when you have already provided several credible tests of the past in your other examples. Those examples were reasonable and NPOV, this is not. Mkmcconn 21:57 May 10, 2003 (UTC)


 * Please don't wait for me to delete the new material, before discussing these points. Thanks.  Mkmcconn 21:30 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

My main problem is that this article is developing into Jacquerie's personal essay -- it does not attribute most of its speculations and is not sufficiently balanced. Now that "creeping supernaturalizion" is back in the article we also have to deal with the problem that nobody seems to actually use that term. I am sure that there are similar hypotheses in the skeptical literature, but these are not mentioned. I would prefer to cut down this article to the version before this material was added and try to find attributions for different hypotheses one by one. --Eloquence 21:56 May 10, 2003 (UTC)


 * I prefer to keep the "creeping supernaturalization" material prior to the latest additions, because the term is locally defined, distinguishing it from purposeful distortion. It provides a simple test, easily acceptable criteria of falsifiability, and a complete example for detail, while also pointing out the limitations of what the example proves. Mkmcconn 22:02 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Again, Supernaturalization is NOT a real word. Wikipedia is descriptive, NOT prescriptive. We should not invent fake words that English speakers do not use, and advocate tehir usegae, and even more so when this is coming from the POV of one person. The term "supernaturilization" does not appear in dictionaries of encyclopedias, and it spectacularly fails the Google test. (Out of millions of web pages, it appears only 24 times...less often than for totally made-up words that a group of friends might happen to use on their websites!) We must remove this phrase both from the title of this article, and in the article, and write this article in the English language. Also, this article is becoming a POV essay; this is not right. We need a new title, otherwise it shall continue to have no focus at all. Suggestions? How about something like "Critical studies of religious claims".


 * The title supernaturalization is OK. While this specific noun may be rare (15 additional hits on groups.google), other variants like "supernaturalize(d)" are much more common (162+281 hits). This article is about a specific hypothesis that is held by many skeptics, as the reference illustrates and as noted in the above discussion. Feel free to add different perspectives, but I think the first part of the article does not need to be changed much. --Eloquence 00:01 May 11, 2003 (UTC)


 * I do not have aproblem with the hypothesis being described. I agree with it myself.! I have a problem with making up a word that practically no one uses, and then using this word in a dictionary or encyclopedia. Since we write our articles for the majority of English speakers, our English-useage must be based on standard useage. How many people will come to this encyclopedia for info on this subject, and enter the word "Supernaturlization" into the search engine? Damn few. The other problem is that this article has little focus. RK


 * I see no good alternative. The term "supernaturalize" is clearly used, and supernaturalization is reasonably close to be not too inventive on our part. Of course, if you find a more common term that describes this specific process, I'd like to hear it. I agree that the remainder of the article lacks focus, but your additions did not help much and lead us away from the main question, namely, how are supernatural causes ascribed to natural events? --Eloquence 00:13 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

A couple of alternative terms that are frequently used: mythification and spiritualization. Both do not encapsulate the concept discussed here as well as supernaturalization, IMHO, and are often used in contradictory ways. --Eloquence

RK, the article is about the process by which supernatural elements are allegedly imported into explanations and descriptions of natural occurances. The article should be pared down, to focus on that. Edits that generalize away from this specific issue, making it more difficult to tell what the article is about (such as you have attempted to make, several times), do not answer your complaint that the article is "unfocused" in any way that I can understand. Do we have different ideas of what "focus" means? Mkmcconn


 * I know full well what the word "focus" means. As you can see from the comments of others, there are many complaints about this article on this point. Also, I am not making any edits which "generalize away from this specific issue".  Rather, a major problem with the article has been that it is poorly defined, and using a totally made-up word; much more explanation was needed to specifically define the topic of discussion. It simply wouldn't be clear to most causal readers what the controversy was, or why differences of opinion exist. We need to state these reasons explicitly, and not rely on the causal reader to infer them. RK

Why did Eloquence delete the explanation of what this article is about? You can't discuss the subject without at least a synopsis of why people have different points of view on the subject. In fact, this article makes absolutely no sense at all unless we specifially acknowledge why traditional religious believers view the Bible in a way that is totally at odds with the way that modern critical readers see the Bible. You can't delete absolutely everything on the topic, and just say see the article on Supernatural (as you have done). We have already gone over this exact point before on many Wikipedia articles. Repetition of certain intoductory facts are necessary in Wikipedia articles. Each article, to some extent, needs to make sense on its own. RK


 * What I did with supernaturalism was to redirect it to an article that wasn't BS. I expect it to be restored, and hoped to have a hand in that.  Busy right now, but I'll get around to it.  The present article, I have fought hard to keep, as I also did forcreeping supernaturalization (silly name aside), and Argument from silence.  These skeptical articles are not BS.  I do not personally agree with them; but that doesn't matter to me.  Even if they are argumentative to some degree, they are worth arguing with - and that is uncommon.  Many skeptical arguments are better ignored; these are not among them.  And that is the point, RK.  It is an article on a skeptical hypothesis, not yet another article on religious anthropology and the psychology of religion. -- Mkmcconn \


 * The article already explains very clearly what it's about. It gets off track at the end, when it attempts to become an essay on the psychology of religious disappointment; but, prior to that it is about religious fish stories, and how they tend to become more and more interesting over time.  It is not about (or was not, until you added it) why people are not fundamentalists. -- Mkmcconn 14:37 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

I really do appreciate the work Eloquence, Mkmcconn, and other have put into this. Nevertheless, I still have fundamental problems with this article. Eloquence has chastized me for not inviting open debate; this is why I am now reitterating my objections here.

Inter alia, Eloquence writes above that "My main problem is that this article is developing into Jacquerie's personal essay." To be clear, this was my main objection all along. And I believe that long-time contributors to Wikipedia must be vigilant against this prcatice, as it devalues the whole enterprise.

I do believe that the ways people use notions of "the supernatural" is very important and worthy of at least one if not more articles in Wikipedia. In fact, many theologians and historians and sociologists of religion have written about this. What is most irritating about the original version of this article (the one I blanked -- I am not referring to additions recently made by Eloquence) was that it reflected at best a superficial and sloppy knowledge of this body of scholarly literature.


 * See Talk:Supernatural/Supernaturalization_(archive) for your attempts to demonstrate this with reference to Jane Austen and Moby Dick. Jacquerie27 20:59 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

Let me state my four main objections:

1) The opening sentence: "The neologism supernaturalize, meaning "to make supernatural", is sometimes used to describe" -- I object to the passive voice. The article should be clear about who has used this term to describe.  I have the same objection with the heading, "Reasons people study supernaturilization" -- for the article to be an encyclopedia article rather than a personal essay, it must inform us as to who studies "supernaturalism."  And the "who" should not be the author(s) of the articles, their beer-buddies, or one of their friend's web-site.

2)The scholarship on religion, and discussions of the relationship between science and religion, has changed a good deal over the past two hundred years. Frankly, much of this article reads as if it were written by atheists during the French Revolution! Now, I love Voltaire and Diderot as much as the next person. I even find Frazer interesting. But these are pretty old arguments and anthropologists, sociologists, and historians have much more sophisticated analyses of how people deploy religion (and how people deploy science), which the article ought to reflect.


 * You've certainly revealed how sophisticated your own understanding of the topic is, which is why you didn't answer the points I made in Talk:Supernatural/Supernaturalization_(archive).


 * I wouldn't exactly call them "points." Slrubenstein


 * Yes, because if you exactly called them points you might have had to reply to them and admit you were wrong:


 * You said: "I read a book called Red Planet about the colonization of Mars. As far as I could tell, all of the science within it was correct. But I do not seriously believe that there is a functioning colony on Mars."


 * I replied: "If you're arguing from a book in a modern genre following quite different rules that the OT has to be accepted in toto or not at all, you've failed to notice that you haven't rejected the modern book in toto: you've accepted the science. You accept the science and reject the colony on Mars; I accept Jewish history (more or less) and reject God as the engine of it."


 * You said: "I read a book called Pride and Prejudice and it all seemed pretty realistic to me. But I really don't think Mr. Darcy ever existed or did the things he does in that book."


 * I replied: "But do you think Jane Austen based her characters on real people? Do you think she transcribed actual experience in any way? Then you treat her as I treat the Bible: as in some way based on reality."


 * You real do not get it. Not only does the Bible not have to be reador "accepted" in toto or not at all, it is often read selectively and in different ways.


 * Good self-satirizing tautology. You were criticizing me for accepting one part of the Bible (the account of plagues, etc), while rejecting another (God as author of the plagues, etc). IOW, after criticizing me for reading the Bible selectively, you announce that the Bible is often read selectively. And not only that, it can be read in different ways. Jacquerie27 14:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)


 * Many Bible scholars read it using precisely the same tools they apply to other works of fiction, such as Red Plane, Moby DIck, and Pride and Prejudice. Clearly the authors of the Bible were responding to real Including really imagined) experieinces, clearly they were often employing rhetorical devices, including metaphor and allegory as well as claims to realism and naturalism.


 * This won't be news to anyone who's looked at the Bible. Or many other religious texts. Jacquerie27 14:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

See Aurbach's study comparing the Bible and the Odyssey as literary narratives. Slrubenstein


 * Or, more generally, something like C.H. Gordon's The Common Background of Hebrew and Greek Civilizations (1965). Jacquerie27 14:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

I have no objection at all to citing earlier scholars of religion, but they should be contextualized. Perhaps this is something that Eloquence can do, as he has already made some informed additions. My point: the article should be organized to present changes in how scholars have discussed this.

3) As RK points out, this is a neologism and even Eloquence hasn't found many hits on google.


 * The article pointed out from the beginning that "supernaturalize" was a neologism. Eloquence has asked someone to come up with a better term and no-one has as yet. Jacquerie27 20:59 May 11, 2003 (UTC)


 * No one -- meaning you -- has because "no one" has none "no research."


 * Then where did the quotes from Leon Festinger and B.F. Skinner come from? Did I socially construct them? Jacquerie27 19:17 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * Since the article is purporting to be about something that really happens, and is about something scholars have talked about, it is merely a matter of finding out how scholars talk about it.


 * Are Leon Festinger and B.F. Skinner scholars? Jacquerie27 19:17 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * They are scholars, but not scholars of religion or the Bible.

Scholars in fact use different terms because they talk about these phenomena in a different way than you -- but I argue that it is how scholars talk about these issues, and not how Jaquerie talks about them, that shoulc be the subject of an encyclopedia article.


 * The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for "supernaturalize" with the meaning I've given is 1643. It's a wonder I've still got my teeth. Jacquerie27 19:17 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * So, supernaturalize is not a neologism. But to write an encyclopedia article, do not refer just to a dictionary, refer to the scholars who use the words the dictionary defines!

And, as Wesley pointed out some time ago, these ideas are discussed in other articles in Wikipedia. There is nothing wrong with an encyclopedia article about a neologism -- as long as it is a neologism that has recently been coined by others, in this case, scholars of religion -- not by the encyclopedia itself.


 * So Wikipedia dates back to 1643? And ultra-orthodox rabbis are "scholars of religion". Do you think they'd agree with your scholars of religion? Jacquerie27 19:17 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * I am really not sure what you mean by ultra-orthodox rabbis. When I refer to scholars, I am thinking of critical scholars in the tradition of Julius Wellhausen and Yehezkal Kaufman.  That you have tried to make a contribution to an encyclopedia article on a topic concerning religion, and have made mention of the Bible, yet seem to be unaware of what critical scholarship on the Bible is, does not speak well of you.


 * EJ, I'm learning. Thanks to you, I now know the Bible can be read in different ways. Jacquerie27 14:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

I really have two claims to make about here, one about the term and one about the content. About the term: it seems to me that the term itself is a highly POV term not actually used by scholars; I object to it being presented as if it were some objective phenomenon.


 * I've addressed that objection and not had an answer yet:


 * Given these facts from history and philosophy, I think it would be wrong to assume some ontological or epistemological priority to nature and to claim that that assumption is NPOV.


 * I keep pointing out there is no assumption: naturalism says things and proves them. It offers detailed explanations of phenomena like plague, flood, hurricane, locusts, etc, etc. It also attempts to predict and control these phenomena and has had a great deal of success. Supernaturalism does none of these things: its proponents observe the phenomena and then claim they are supernatural in some way. They offer no precise details and no objective way of verifying this, contradict themselves, and retreat into the explanatory gaps as naturalistic science advances. Claim both POVs are equally valid or equally worthy of respect if you like: the facts say otherwise. Jacquerie27 21:34 May 8, 2003 (UTC)


 * You don't understand what I mean, because you are ignorant.


 * Yes, I know. I suppose that's why I thought psychology might be relevant to a psychological phenomenon. Jacquerie27 19:17 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * Oh, sorry -- if "supernaturalization" refers to a psychological phenomenon, I admit I am unfamiliar with the psychological research on supernaturalization. Please provide an account of psychological research on supernatioralization in the article. Slrubenstein

You need to do some research. Let me help. For the general argument within sociology,


 * Hold on. Are sociological explanations "social constructs"? If they are, why do they have priority over the scientific explanations I offer? Because you take sociology seriously? If they aren't, how exactly does sociology escape the trap science falls into? Jacquerie27 19:17 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * see Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman&#8217;s 1966 The Social Construction of Reality


 * For the more specific argument within the sociology of science, see Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar&#8217;s Laboratory Life, and Andrew Pickering&#8217;s 1984 Constructing Quarks. The works argue that scientific explanations are social constructs, and thus implicitly critique the use of &#8220;nature&#8221; to explain phenomena.


 * And what do these "scholars" propose to put in its place? Apart from hot air? And is their own work a "social construct"? If it is, how do we know whether it's correct? Or is "truth" a "social construct" too? Jacquerie27 19:17 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * There are also many studies that specifically argue that &#8220;nature&#8221; itself is a social construct, primarily by geographers and anthropologists:


 * Yes, I know there are many studies arguing that "nature" is a "social construct". I'm asking this for the third time, tho' no doubt for the third time you'll refuse to answer. If "nature" is a "social construct", why do human beings put up with such inconvenient aspects of "nature" as old age, disease, dangerous animals, asteroid impact, etc, etc? Is it because we're masochists? Jacquerie27 19:17 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * You do not get the point, so I just suggest reading the articles and books. As for responding to your question, I have asked you too many times and you simply ignore my answers. Slrubenstein


 * You meant "I have answered you too many times", but your subconscious seems to think that you haven't -- see Freudian slip. Jacquerie27 14:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)


 * Cronon, William&#8217;s 1984 Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England; 1996 Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature.


 * Demeritt, D. 1994 &#8220;The Nature of Metaphors in Cultural Geography and Environmental History,&#8221; in Progress in Human Geography 18: 163-185, and 1994 &#8220;Ecology, Objectivity, and Critique in Writings on Nature in Human Societies,&#8221; in Journal of Historical Geography 20: 22-37; 1998 &#8220;Science, Social Constructivism, and Nature,&#8221; in B. Braun & N. Castree (eds.) Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium.


 * Denevan, W.M.1992 &#8220;The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492,&#8221; in Annals of The Association of American Geographers 82(3): 369-385.


 * Jarosz, L. 1993 &#8220;Defining and Explaining Tropical Deforestation - Shifting Cultivation and Population Growth in Colonial Madagascar (1896-1940),&#8221; in Economic Geography 69(4): 366-379.


 * Nesbitt, J. T. and D. Weiner 2001 &#8220;Conflicting environmental imaginaries and the politics of nature in Central Appalachia,&#8221; in ''Geoforum 32(3): 333-349.


 * Stott, P. and S. Sullivan, eds 2000 Political Ecology: Science, Myth and Power.


 * Willems-Braun, B 1997 &#8220;Buried Epistemologies: The Politics of Nature in (Post)colonial British Columbia,&#8221; in Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87(1): 3-31.


 * The above are just a short sampling of what actual scholars are talking about concerning the social construction of nature. A full discussion of their research should be the topic of another article, not this one -- my point is that this article should not reflect a point of view rejected by scholars as if it were a scholarly point of view.


 * But it is a scholarly point of view. See Sokal Affair for an example of how easily these "actual scholars" of yours are duped when a proper scientist decides to "critique" their "notions" of the "social construction" of "nature" and "reality". Jacquerie27 19:17 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * Sokal admits in his essays that he knows little about sociology, and calls himself an amateur in the field of philosophy of science;


 * He was an amateur in postmodernism too, but he took in the editors of a postmodern journal completely. Jacquerie27 21:27 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * his essential argument is that empiricism should be the chief criterion for evaluating claims about physics and biology.


 * Yes, and psychology (including the psychology of religion) is part of biology. Jacquerie27 21:27 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * And of course that peer review is still important. He does not (at least in a quick read of a couple of his essays regarding the affair) address the issue of epistemology when the question is regarding supernatural or paranormal phenomena, regarding which there can by definition not be any empirical evidence. I don't think that the Sokal Affair has much to say about the supernatural.


 * Indirectly it does, because it's about metaphysics and verifiability, but let's not argue about it. ;) I raised it here because it definitely says a lot about this claim by "actual scholars" that nature and scientific explanations are "social constructs". This is from Sokal Affair:


 * The article contains a number of statements that Sokal stated were "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense." At one stage he asserts that "physical reality is at bottom nothing more than a social and linguistic construct," and at another he proposes that the New Age concept of the morphogenetic field actually constitutes a "cutting edge theory of quantum gravity." As further evidence of deliberate fabrications, Sokal also cited his proposition that "the axiom of equality in mathematical set theory is analogous to the homonymous concept in feminist politics."


 * He agrees that science and the scientific questions we ask are heavily influenced by politics and society, but that's true of everything we do, including sociology and the philosophy of science, and I'm still waiting for Slr to answer this question: 'If "nature" is a "social construct", why do human beings put up with such inconvenient aspects of "nature" as old age, disease, dangerous animals, asteroid impact, etc, etc?' Jacquerie27 21:27 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * (btw, I notice you used "scare quotes" the same way Sokal did in his parody article. Nice tribute!) Wesley 20:45 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * Or lack of imagination on my part. Jacquerie27 21:27 May 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * There has been much written on the Sokal affair; anyone who has studied it seriously understands that it is not about a "scientist" proving postmodernism wrong.


 * No, it's about a scientist proving "postmodernists" don't recognize deliberate nonsense when they see it. Jacquerie27 14:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)


 * Sokal may be a descent scientists, but he doesn't understand the finer points of post-structural analysis (and by the way, few of the works I cite above, are postmodernist; Latour is not, neither are Berger and Luckman). The editors of the journal asked him to revise his article to respond to certain problems they had with it and he refused. Slrubenstein


 * The "certain problem" they should have had with it was that it was deliberate nonsense from beginning to end. Despite being, like you, well-versed in the finer points of post-structural analysis, they failed to notice. Maybe you should try submitting a deliberately nonsensical paper to a journal of physics or mathematics, and then writing the results up in Rubenstein Affair. It shouldn't be difficult to take them in, if physics and mathematics are intellectually and epistemologically equivalent to your specialties. Jacquerie27 14:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

About the content: there is much important content here and despite having once blanked the page I never felt that good content should be deleted. As I have suggested time and again, most of the worthwhile content here belongs on other pages, pages on Supernatural, Religion, Animism, History of Christianity, and so on.

Slrubenstein

4) I think Eloquence disagrees with me, but I continue to believe that this article fundamentally misrepresents an issue in both theology and the critical (sociological, anthropological) study of religion.


 * Which is possibly because you continue to misunderstand the points being made. Jacquerie27 20:59 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

The issue is not that event that people accept as natural are re-presented as having supernatural causes (I know there are some recent examples, but I think these are relatively few and more importantly recent, and it is anachronistic and ethnocentric and unscientific to think that people in the Near East 3,000 years ago thought the same way as people in the U.S. or Europe today


 * Nobody was saying they did think like that, as you'd realize if you understood the points being made. Jacquerie27 20:59 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

), the question is why do some people identify certain events as natural, and others identify them as supernatural? This is a somewhat different phenomena. It is also one much studied by critical scholars, and I hate seeing an uninformed personal essay distort those critical studies. Slrubenstein 17:48 May 11, 2003 (UTC)


 * Go on, you can admit it, Slr: you are a Saki fan, aren't you? I can see you struggling to keep it hidden, but it's kinda like Tourette's syndrome: the harder you repress it, the more strongly it comes out in the end, and it certainly came out strongly there. Jacquerie27 20:59 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

--

I have just deleted 4 paragraphs I have written in response to the above. Instead, I suggest the following compromise:


 * 1) That the process of "supernaturalization" will be discussed in supernatural, along with the reasons why people believe the supernatural cannot exist. Besides this neologism, we can also mention other terms that are sometimes used to describe the same or a similar process.
 * 2) That we will try to reduce the amount of personal speculation, and move or remove speculations in the second half of the article.

I have merged and somewhat edited the article into supernatural already. This is currently a bit long, but once we have addressed 2), I think we can keep it a reasonable size. Opinions? If there are no objections, I suggest moving this already long discussion to Talk:Supernatural/Supernaturalization (archive). --Eloquence 18:18 May 11, 2003 (UTC)


 * E, I am moving a portion of the talk page into the archive, as you discuss. I have left the latest discussion -- since the point, content, and organization of the article is still in flux, I ant to give others another couple of days to respond to the various points J, RK, M, you, and I have made.  Your plan for the article seems reasonable -- I won't make any changes one way or the other, but I'd like to see what others think. Slrubenstein

Some people may have been following the now tedious debate between myself an Jacquerie27, which has recently descended into the Sokal affair. I apologize for getting carried away. I'd likt to try to make the point -- not my own personal point about spiritualization, but a basic point about wikipedia -- crystal clear: we are committed to NPOV. There is no need for any debate over whether reality is or is not socially constructed. The fact is that many scholars have written on the social construction of nature and of reality. This is one point of view. Others believe not only that there is an objective reality but that we humans can know about it and write about it accurately. This too is a legitimate point of view.


 * You say above: "my point is that this article should not reflect a point of view rejected by scholars as if it were a scholarly point of view." Now you admit it is a scholarly POV, tho' you try to disguise this by saying "others" rather than "other scholars", and "legitimate" rather than "scholarly". Your own bias is obvious in what you write about the two POVs, as is your logocentrism (and logolatry) in "we humans can know about it [objective reality] and write about it". Those who believe in objective reality do much more than just write about it. Jacquerie27 14:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

What is important in Wikipedia is that these views be identified for what they are -- particular views.


 * By NPOV we should also note that they don't receive equal respect or attention and that proponents of one have difficulty recognizing deliberate nonsense when they see it. Jacquerie27 14:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

I have no doubt that some people claim that the Bible has taken natural events and ascribed to them supernatural causes. I have no objection to this claim being presented in the article, as long as it is clear that it is one claim among many, and that it is made clear who makes this claim. But it cannot be presented as the only, best, or most authoritative claim. Slrubenstein


 * The supernaturalization article explicitly stated from the beginning that it was presenting "possible definitions", not "the only, best, or most authoritative claim". Jacquerie27 14:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)