Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of appearances of God in fiction


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was delete. --Core desat  01:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

List of appearances of God in fiction

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God appears in far too many places in fiction (especially as an idea rather than a character) for it to be a good idea to try to list them all. Most of the material here is questionable; for instance, God doesn't really appear in The Chronicles of Narnia (which isn't a film anyway), Bedazzled, and certainly not in The Matrix... God does appear in some of the other movies as a brief reference, and I'm sure the list is grossly incomplete and always will be. Fundamentally, this is a similar article to Depictions of God in popular culture which I've also put up for deletion. The difference is that this one has slightly less crufty trivia, NO pretentions of attempting to create an article, and is a bad premise for a list. God is a major theme in western literature: for this reason it's essential to write about that as a general trend, but a very bad idea to list all the times God appears. Mango juice talk 13:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * delete. just a list. SYSS Mouse 13:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * delete Makes for a very long list.  Some would argue that god is a fictional character and thus every appearance would be in a work of fiction. -- Mufka (user) (talk) (contribs) 14:07, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * DeleteSome would argue that god is everywhere, so he's in every work of fiction, so...a very, very, very very long list! Emeraude 14:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per Emeraude. Raystorm 14:59, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete: this list would be too long if completed and unmaintainable. Alba 16:12, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep: The list says it has to be a physical or mental (i.e. voiceover) manifestation of God. So it's not possible for an editor to claim that God is everywhere and add every movie to this list.  The list states its discriminating criteria at the top of the article, and as such, it's not actually a very long or incomplete list.  If the list was about the idea of God, or God as a metaphor, or themes about God, then I'd probably agree with the deletion.  But as is, it's a much narrower topic than that. --JayHenry 16:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete as indiscriminate and ill-defined. Captures appearances of "God" plus appearances of characters who falsely claim to be "God" or "God-characters" acting in opposition to common conceptions of "God." Otto4711 19:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep seems to be more than a list. God is sometimes considered to be a legit character in certain works of fiction; The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family describes him that way. So with discrimination you could make a good list. This also could be of interest to a social scientist- students of religion or the media. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 03:17, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - oh, and I spot an omission to the list. I'm sure God's mentioned in The Bible somewhere... Grutness...wha?  03:56, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, unbelievably indiscriminate, Supreme Being(s) have been depicted in fictional works since before the dawn of recorded history. Thankfully though the article as-is ignores trivial mentions in unimportant old books like The Divine Comedy, in favor of highly important appearances in Family Guy and "WWE Backlash 2006." Krimpet 04:57, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ridiculously strong delete A POV Fork, as some people consider the Bible a work of fiction. Feeeshboy 18:40, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Just so people know, The Bible used to be on the list, but was removed. Per the talk page, it's controversial to consider the Bible fiction, although obviously some people do.  But it does open up another difficulty: why can we include The Ten Commandments (the movie) which is an adaptation of a bible story -- how can it be fictional if the Bible isn't?  And if we include all biblical adaptations... I shudder to think.  Mango juice talk 21:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Merge to Depictions of God in popular culture per the keeping reasons given by CanadianCaesar and JayHenry, which seem more rooted in policy to me than the reasons given to delete so far have been. Feel free to drop a note on my talk page if you come up with a reason to delete that hasn't been covered yet, to see if I'll change my vote. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 00:09, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - Huge ridiculous list with no viable criteria for inclusion/exclusion. Wickethewok 22:32, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.