User:Slrubenstein/Sandbox

user:Slrubenstein/Sandbox/culture

Since antiquity, natural historians refer to a metaphorical scheme of chains, cords, ladders and stairways depicting life in a natural order ascending from simple, primitive, or low to complex, advanced, and high. From 1802 until 1822 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck published the first theory of evolution that allowed for infinite diversification of species ascending progressively from simple to complex. According to Lamarck, primitive life forms originate abiogenetically and evolve, over time, into complexly organized beings, humans being the most perfect. The environment was important in Lamarck's two part teleological explanation for the inheritance of acquired traits: 1) change in bodily organs grew with use and atrophied with disuse, and 2) these changes were faithfully preserved through reproduction if both sexes had adopted the same habits and thus acquired the same traits. Lamarck coined the term biology, but he died blind and penniless with many of his ideas subject to ridicule and rejected, and yet some of his broader concepts on evolutionary inheritance continues to influence even the modern sciences.

This complaint against me was also raised at AN/I, where Noloop went after User:Andrew c. Although the AN/I complaint was specifically directed towards Andrew c, in the initial complaint Noloop regularly lumped me and Andrew c together. I was one of a number of editors who supported Andrew c, and it was at AN/I that I first spelled out in detail my own complaints against Noloop on the grounds that he was a disruptive editor who had repeatedly made bigoted remarks against different scholars. The AN/I ended inconclusively because this is at heart a content dispute. Apparently, Noloop is done attacking Andrew c. But I guess now it is my turn.

This is in my view a content dispute, which is one reason the AN/I went nowhere. It also means that there is no point in taking it to ArbCom. Perhaps mediation would be a good idea. In any event, I accept the outcome of the RfC against Noloop, and am trying to find ways to address his concerns constructively, but I admit I find this very difficult.

First, let me say that I have never said anything about my being an admin. I never used any of my sysop rights in any action against Noloop. As far as I can tell this is a conflict among editors. That Noloop presents this as a conflict between an admin and an editor suggests I have in someway misused my sysop abilities. This is simply false.

Second, as to Noloop's bigotry, my position is this: we never ask an editor to identify herself according to her race, creed, color or national origin. The race, creed color or national origina of an editor is or should be irrelevant in deciding whether an edit improves an article or does not improve an article. I have seen editors introduce information about their race, creed, color or national origin as a way of explaining their own POV and I recognize that race, creed, color or national origina can be helpful in trying to understand one's point of view. But I think it is wrong to assume this is the case. To assume this before actually knowing someone's views is the very definition of prejudice, and we should not condone it.

I take the same attitude towards the authors of books or articles we might use in WP articles. I think we should avoid making assumptions about an author's race, creed, color or national origin. '''It is important to identify the point of view presented in a source. In most cases, the source itself identifies its point of view. In some cases, secondary sources may identify or depate a source's point of view. But it is prejudiced to assume you know what point of view is being expressed based on the identity of the author before you read the contents of the source. My point: identify the point of view based on what the author actually says is his or her point of view (or a reliable secondary source). To make assumptions based on someone's race, creed, color, or national origin without caring to look at their actual work is bigotry.

An analogy: Henry Louis Gates is a literary critic and author of a book on an important African-American narrative device The Signifying Monkey. The late John Hope Franklin was a historian and wrote one of the seminal books on African American history, From Slavery to Freedom. William Julius Williams is a sociologist who wrote The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass And Public Policy, one of the most important sociological works on African Americans. Now, each of these men is an African American. And each of these books is on an African Americans or some aspect of African Americans culture. I think it would be a profound insult if someone were to add to one of our articles on Blacks "The Black view is expressed in The Signifying Monkey," or "Many African Americans believe (reference to From Slavery to Freedom)," of "A notable black view is found in Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass And Public Policy". This would be an insult to Henry Louis Gates, John Hope Franklin, and William Julius Wilson, because it is suggesting that they can only express a "black view" and not "a literary critic's view," or "a historian's view" or "a sociologist's view." But it is also an insult to the academic fields of literary criticism, history, and sociology, because you are saying either one of two things: either these are white disciplines, and can never claim any objectivity but only perpetuate the views of one race ... or you are saying that these fields have no theoretical or methodological standards that provide a basis for declaring something to be scholarly. These authors are writing about some important aspect of African American life. And they happen to be African Americans. So they are writing about something one would reasonably expect them to have personal feelings about. But they did not write these books to express their personal feelings or to express a "black" point of view. And professional literary critics, historians, and sociologists consider these books to express the point of view of a literary critic, a historian, a sociologist.

I think it would be bigoted to say that these works of scholarship reflect a black point of view and to be balanced we need to find works by white literary critics, white historians, white sociologists. It would be bigoted, and we at Wikipedia should discourage this.

But this is what Noloop is doing. He is insisting that if the author of a history book on Jesus is Christian, the book therefore expresses a Christian point of view. He shows no evidence that he has read the book, indeed, he expresses no interest in reading the book. The possibility that the Christian may also be a trained historian who (like John Hope Franklin) is writing history, using the same methods and with the same objectives of any other professional historian, writina a book that would be of value and use to any historian, does not even seem to cross his mind. This is bigotry.

And when other editors bring evidence that the author in question is not expressing a Christian point of view, or that the methods and approach and objectives of the book written by a Christian are the same as books written by non-Christian historians, he simply ignores what these other editors write. he does not care about actual evidence about the views expressed in the books. This is bigotry

Other editors are trying to write articles basedon reliable sources. Noloop rejects all of them because they are expressing a Christian point of view. '''But let us be clear about the issue. No one - no one is saying that these articles should present only a Christian point of view. But Andrew c, I, and other editors who have actually read the books are saying that these books do not forward a Christian point of view.'''

But Noloop ignores us; since the authors are Christians, the books "must" express a Christian point of view, so we who have read the books must be wrong. This is the mindset of a bigot. And how does one edit collaboratively with a bigot?

I have found it quite hard. When I answer a question he asks, he ignores my answer. When i ask him a question, he ignores my question. There is no dialogue. For over a month we have just had a simple monologue: any book written by a Christian expresses a Christian point of view. That is all he says. Relentlessly.

Please do not accept his suggestion that all I do is call him names. I have tried to reason with him. I have tried to explain at length the organization of modern universities and differences in approach among different kinds of scholars. I have tried to explain what kinds of questions and methods historians care about, and how one can distinguish a "Christian" point of view from a work of critical history. He simply ignores everything of substance I say. It doesn't matter to him, because if the author of a book is a Christian, that is sufficient information to conclude that the book is presenting a Christian point of view.

I have said this is a content dispute but it is a surreal content dispute because Noloop actually ignores the contents of the books in question. That is my point about bigotry. He prejudges the book based on the identity of the author. Content actually becomes irrelevant to him.

My calling Noloop a bigot is not a personal attack, it is a diagnosis of a problem. The personal attack is being made by Noloop. He is attacking the scholarly integrity of notable historians based on their creed. I consider this intolerable and do not like to see Wikipedia condoning it. We should never attack anyone based on their race, creed, color, or national origin. I admit that my POV here comes from my being an Amaerican; in the united States to discriminate against someone based on their race, creed, color, or national origin is a violation of their civil rights. Here at Wikipedia, it is not just offensive, it degrades the quality of the encyclopedia. Obviously a Christian can express a Christian POV, just like a Jew can express a Jewish POV and a Black can express a Black POV. In fact, anti-Semites often call psychoanalysis the "Jewish science" because Freud was Jewish. This is not the model we should be following when we seek to identify the point of view being expressed in a source. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 11:50, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Louis Menand (2001) The Metaphysical Club New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux


 * Darwin's fundamental insight as a biologist was that mong groups of sexually reproducing organisms, the variations are much mofe important than the similarities... (122)


 * A way of thinking that regards individual differences as inessential departures from a general type is therefore not well suited for dealing with the natural world. A general type is fixed, determinate, and uniform; the world Darwin described is characterized by chance, change, and difference - all the attributes general types are designed to leave out.  In emphasizing the particularity of individual organisms, Darwin did not conclude that species do not exist.  He only concluded that species are what they appear to be: ideas, which are provisionally useful for naming groups of interacting individuals.  "I look at the term species," he wrote," as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other ... It does not essentially differ from the word variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for convenience sake."  Difference goes all the way down. (123)


 * Once our attention is redirected to the individual, we need another way of making generalizations. We are no longer interested in the conformity of an individual to an ideal type; we are now interested in the relation of an individual to the other individuals with which it interacts.  To generalize about groups of interacting individuals, we need to drop the language of types and essences, which is prescriptive (telling us what finches should be), and adopt the language of statistics abd probability, which is predictive (telling us what the average finch, under specified conditions, is likely to do).  Relations will be more important than categories; functions, which are variable, will be more important than purposes; transitions will be more important than boundaries; sequences will be more important than hierarchies. (123-124)

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My reverting of Stevertigo's changes
Stevertigo is upset, and apparently puzzled, as to why I reverted his previous edit without comment. I am surprised he was puzzled. I thought the reason was obvious. I guess it isn't, at least not to Stevertigo.

I made it clear from the first time I explained my reversion of Stevertigo's initial change to the lead, that I was opposed to original research. On January 21, Leadwind told Stevertigo that he should include citations. this was Stevertigo's edit, which I reverted as soon as I saw it. Is anyone still confused as to why I reverted?

I made it clear that original research violates Wikipedia policy the day before! And what was Severtigo's response to Leadwind's suggestion? No, Stevertigo did not add citations ... he added "fact" tags!!! Can you believe it? Who adds "fact" tags ''to thir own edits?!?!? This is ridiculous! Someone adds content, someone else suspects original research and adds "fact" tags, and ten the original editor adds the sources, or removes the material because s/he had no sources!

But Stevertigo just short-circuited all this and added the "fact" tags himself, meaning he did not know his own sources!!! Which means only one thing: his addition was just more of the (very crappy) original research we may now be getting used to from this editor. Now, this should be enough of an explanation for my deletion of his edits: OR violates our policy, period.

But maye you feel I need to justify my judgment thet Stevertigo's original research is crappu to boot. Okay, I have already justified deleting his edit, but I will explain anyway:

Stevertigo's version
Stevertigo's crappy original research: "The Yeshua transliteration is controversial, and certain Hebrew scholars have disputed its etymological derivation as an inaccurate reconstruction.[citation needed] Hebrew Midrash appears to support the use of Yeshua —the name Yeshu ha-Notzri directly translates as "Jesus the Nazarene." But the term Yeshu has certain anti-Christian meaning, and this fact complicates using these texts as the basis for the name's Hebrew etymology.[citation needed]"

Phrase-by-phrase, my objections:
 * The transliteration is not "controversial," it is unsourced. What is controversial is an editor violating NOR.
 * "certain Hebrew scholars" - who? Weasel words is a dead giveaway of original research.  I never mentioned any Hebrew scholars who disputed this.  Did anyone else?  My objection is that there is no historical source for Jesus' original name.  This is just a fact; no scholar has ever claimed that there is, and we cannot argue from the negative.
 * Moreover, it is Christian scholars - Clement of Alexandria and St. Cyril, who argued that Jesus in the Greek was his original name, and "Yeshua" or "Yehoshuah" were later translations from Greek to Aramaic or Hebrew ... Christian scholars, not Hebrew scholars.
 * Hebrew Midrash - this itself is ignorant, what Stevertigo is referring to is in Aramaic, and it is in the Talmud, not the Midrash.
 * "appears to support" is a dead giveaway of original research, which I continue to insist is the key problem here.
 * In fact it does not even "appear" to support. Many medieval Jewish scholars, such as Rabbainu Tam and Nahmanides, and many modern critical scholars, such as David Kramer and Joseph Klausner, have argued that Yeshu is not Jesus.  Some modern scholars claim that the Yeshu who appears in the Talmud is an allusion to Jesus.  This is indeed a controversy - not a controversy over how to transcribe from one language to another, but rather how to interpret these stories.  But none of the modern scholars claim that Yeshu was Jesus' original name.  A couple of scholars like Jeffrey Rubenstein claim that Yeshu was the rabbi's creation of a character in response to Christianity.  Since all this happened in the third, fourth, or fifth century, it is almost certain they were transliterating the Greek into Aramaic.  These texts were written centuries after Jesus, in the Sassanid Empire, where Christians were a small minority living in parts of the Empire quite distant from centers of Jewish habitation and scholarly activity.  These are not good historical sources on Jesus, and no historian I know of claims they are.
 * "Yeshu ha-Notzri directly translates as 'Jesus the Nazarene.'" According to whom?  Maimonides thought this.  But some scholars such as Joseph Klausner and Gil Student point out that the word Notzri appears in Jeremiah referring to a religious group usually translated as "the watchers" (Jeremiah 4:16).  There is no consensus that Yeshu ha-Notzri translates as Jesus the Nazarene" - it could, but maybe not; more original research and a shabby substitute for real research.  We just have no historical source that tells us what Jesus' original name was.
 * "the term Yeshu has certain anti-Christian meaning" No, it doesn't.  It just doesn't.  As I said, most Jewish scholars claim that the Yeshu in the Talmud does not refer to Jesus, so it can't be anti-Christian.  One thing that is very important to bear in mind is that the Talmud (there are two versions, but I am talking about the version in which there are references to Yeshu) was written in Babylonia - where there were very few Christians, mostly living on the other side of the Empire; Judaism was neither competing with nor in conflict with Christianity; nor were Jews oppressing or being oppressed by Christians.  This is a major argument scholars have for saying that "Yeshu" in the Talmud refers to someone named Joshuah, a common Jewish name, and that there is no reason to believe these rabbis were telling stories about Jesus.  One modern Talmud scholar who believes it does refer to Jesus - Jeffrey Rubenstein - argues that the Yeshu stories reflect Jewish ambivalence towards Christianity; another modern Talmud scholar, Daniel Boyarin, shares this view.  But it is the stories that express ambivalence.  The name itself expresses no feelings or judgment whatsoever.  Many believe it is a shortening of Yeshua (required to solve a type-setting problem) - if so it is simply the Aramaic for Joshua, a very common Jewish name ... nothing anti-Christian at all.  And none of this is relevant to the Jesus article.
 * "and this fact complicates using these texts as the basis for the name's Hebrew etymology" - again, no citation, which is evidence of original research and bad research at that. There is no reason why any denotation or connotation should make the translation of Yeshu difficult: a Hebrew scholar is a scholar of a language like any other.  Of course, these texts are in Aramaic, not Hebrew, and do not tell us what Yeshu would be in Greek, so again, they have no relevance to this discussion.

Please note, I am not proposing changes to Stevertigo's edit; I am just providing the requested for explanation as to why it is so objectionable that the entire edit should be reverted.

Stevertigo is really using this badly-researched and reasoned paragraph to forward this argument: Jewish scholars are anti-Christian, and that is why they argue against Stevertigo's POV. I view this as an at best thinly-veiled attack against Jews, who apparently are Christian haters incapable of honest scholarship. In fact, Paula Fredriksen is a Jew who has written very well-respected books about Jesus, and her interpretations are not too far from those of Gentile historians like E.P Sanders or Geza Vermes. Apparently Jews can write honest scholarship about Jesus. It is honest scholarship Stevertigo hates, and maybe Jews, I dunno but he sure keeps bringing Jews into this when doing so is simply unnecessary.

The problem with claiming that Jesus's original name is Yeshua (Aramaic) or Yehoshua (Hebrew) is that we have no contemporary source or any reliable source providing us with his original name. This is the problem. It doesn't matter what your race or creed is, the fact remains the fact (although Stevertigo seems not to be able to resist bringing race or creed into it, somehow!)

As long as there is no scholarly consensus as to what Jesus' original name was, we should not put it in the lead. In the body, we can and should discuss what scholars speculate Jesus' name may have been - but we need to follow NPOV, V and NOR.

Slrubenstein's proposal
Change this: Jesus probably lived in Galilee for most of his life and he probably spoke Aramaic and Hebrew.[94] The name "Jesus" comes from an alternate spelling of the Latin (Iēsus) which in turn comes from the Greek name Iesous (Ιησους). The name has also been translated into English as "Joshua".[95] Further examination of the Septuagint finds that the Greek, in turn, is a transliteration of the Hebrew/Aramaic Yeshua (ישוע) (Yeshua — he will save) a contraction of Hebrew name Yehoshua (יהושוע Yeho — Yahweh [is] shua` — deliverance/rescue, usually Romanized as Joshua). Scholars believe that one of these was likely the name that Jesus was known by during his lifetime by his peers.

To this Jesus probably lived in Galilee for most of his life and he probably spoke Aramaic and Hebrew.[94] The name "Jesus" comes from an alternate spelling of the Latin (Iēsus) which in turn comes from the Greek name Iesous (Ιησους). The name has also been translated into English as "Joshua".[95] Based on an examination of the Septuagint some have suggested that the Greek, in turn, is a transliteration of the Hebrew/Aramaic Yeshua (ישוע) (Yeshua — he will save) a contraction of Hebrew name Yehoshua (יהושוע Yeho — Yahweh [is] shua` — deliverance/rescue, usually Romanized as Joshua). Some scholars believe that one of these was likely the name that Jesus was known by during his lifetime by his peers.

It complies with NPOV by making clear this is just one view; it states what the evidence/manner of reasoning is, and complies with V and NOR by providing the notable sources. It does not claim what Jesus' name "originally" was, it claims what a couple of scholars believe it to be based on a specific piece of evidence. Frankly, I would not mind if another sentence or clause were added explaining what exactly the examination of the Septuagint showed (I can guess, but would like it spelled out).