Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/God/archive1

God
There is only one God in the world. I think this article can be featured. What do you think? 219.77.51.65 13:39, 14 November 2005 (UTC)


 * object -- purely on the basis of the spectacularly POV wording of the proposal. Get your Jesus on elsewhere buddy.


 * object -- it is reasonably fair up to "Theology" (although it is unclear what this "Theology" section is doing on an article proclaimed to be exclusively about the monotheistic concept), but the "Conceptions" section needs a lot of work. So far it seems a more or less random brainstorming of editors, dwelling on Kabbalah, Hinduism and Rosicrucians in particular for some reason (it is also unclear why "Quranic" should appear under the "Jewish, Christian" heading). I suppose the "Conceptions" and "Theology" sections should be merged, with much material exported to specialized articles, and brought in some sort of intuitive sequence. A size of maybe 40k should be a reasonable aim. In its present state, I would be reluctant to give it even a . dab (&#5839;) 14:10, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
 * To add to that, I'd consider grouping Judaic, Christian and Islamic conceptions of God under the title "Abrahamic conceptions". --Oldak Quill 23:14, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment - This article is currently a Article Improvement Drive candidate. KingTT 16:41, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment &mdash; Uh, I wouldn't exactly say that "There is only one God in the world" cuts it in terms of well-reasoned nomination rationale. And what is the issue with the numerous stray bolded words and image captions? Is someone trying to make some sort of a point? Saravask 17:56, 14 November 2005 (UTC).
 * Comment — It needs a picture of God. Since He's everywhere, this should not be difficult to get. Daniel Case 03:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Seems he's a bit protective of his rights: there are no free images out there. Filiocht &#124; &#91;&#91;User talk:Filiocht&#124;The kettle&#39;s on]] 08:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Object needs a lot of structural work as outlined by dab and others. Filiocht &#124; &#91;&#91;User talk:Filiocht&#124;The kettle&#39;s on]] 08:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Object It needs to be broken up into specialized articles. It just tries to do too much while not doing enough, I'm afraid! InvictaHOG 20:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Object, this article just doesn't work for me. Try again. 64.231.177.76 00:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Object and refer to peer review, Lead paragraph is very short, weak, and POV since it randomly namedrops Christianity and no other faiths.—jiy (talk) 09:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Object for all the reasons given above, also because it does not address the burrito question. I'm also wary of the disambiguation notice:  can henotheism be called a "derived faith" if, chronologically speaking, civilizations were henotheist before they were monotheist?  Anville 10:55, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Object. If it's on WP:AID it already indicates it's not perfect. Also needs its formatting fixed. - Mgm|(talk) 13:44, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Object Lead in far too short, lead in mentions Christianity especially, even though it is a monotheistic page, lead in is poorly formatted (why is supreme being capitalised and bolded, for example? I thought only God was meant to be important enough to refer to the being?). And that is just the lead in. Need I go on... Batmanand 16:48, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment Supreme Being is a synonym for God and is conventionally capitalized. —jiy (talk) 02:39, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Support Well written article, and it might give Wikipedia some good karma.   (Previous unsigned comment by DiceDiceBaby on 19:03 18 November 2005) 


 * Comment The religions upon which this article focuses don't trade heavily in karma, methinks. And by listing the phonetic values given to the Tetragrammaton, we seem to be bucking for a lightning bolt, no?  Anville 21:16, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

This article suffers from what I like to refer to as the "In God we Trust" problem as well as two other POV problems.
 * Objection:

It has a section devoted to idea that other religions have other names for God. This seems to imply that everyone is worshiping the same deity; the "same" god just another name-the same tea cup in the sky. I.E. Jehovah and Allah and Ngai and God are the same deity. This brings me to the “In God we Trust” problem. When "In God we Trust" is said, the word "God" is assumed to mean everyone else’s god too. Except it remains to be shown that supporters of "In God we Trust" would equally support "In Allah we trust" or "In Ngai we trust". This is because [in my opinion] supporters believe that even though God is Ngai and God is Allah, Allah is not God and Ngai is not God. And, we are left with the idea that the list of other names in this article are not really acceptable either; everyone else using all these other names are all worshiping god, but worshipers that call their deity god are not worshiping Ngai, or Allah or Zeus or Shiva etc., etc. ad nausea.

Go ahead and change the word god to random selected alternate names proposed in this very article and see if that doesn't cause some anger. That will prove case and point very quickly.

This article does go on to explain that in relation to the idea of the name of God that there are varied sides of the argument; but the fact that this article speaks of other names of god in other religions as equivalent to the name "God" as used in a Western Christian concept clearly puts this article on a specific side of the debate and therefore gives it a very specific POV. God, is the Christian name for the deity in those monotheistic [Christian] religions; that coupled with the "In God we Trust" problem that exists here clearly gives this article a Christian POV. The section with varied other deities of monotheistic religions should probably go under an article about monotheism or in an article all by itself describing various names of gods in monotheistic religions around the world. Perhaps the Christian POV cannot entirely be avoided, so it would be better to more specifically state its dominance of use with Christianity, instead of tip toeing around it. And, then branch out from there to explain "very" specifically the use of the "actual" term (not equivalent term or terms) in other religions, places, peoples, regions, creeds, beliefs etc.

Finally, the de facto use of subjective male pronouns gives this article another specific POV. Related back the numerous alternate names: we see examples of this POV in the listing under the Hindu entry. This entry ignores the polytheistic perspectives of Hinduism; or the monotheistic polytheism that they practice casting it in the Christian POV mentioned above, and neglects to mention Shaktism, a denomination of Hinduism that worships Shakti, or Devi Mata -- the Hindu name for the Great Divine Mother. This is a female monotheistic example; which highlights the Male POV used.

These are just a few of the ways in which this article still has some POVs that need to be worked out. The concept of God should be in Wiki, but it is a highly charged idea that tends to come with a lot of personal POVs. We need to work extra hard to get to neutral ground. Until that point is reached this should not be an example of a "Featured Article". cprockhill Friday November 3, 2006 2:00 AM