Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 August 14

= August 14 =

Ruintia
What is the Ruintia? List of extinct animals of the Hawaiian Islands say it is an extinct mammal, but I can't find anything about it on the internet.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 04:20, 14 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I've deleted it. It was added by User:98.196.92.165, whose primary contributions are to fictional animals, with a history of adding incorrect information to articles.-- O BSIDIAN  †  S OUL  07:31, 14 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Maybe you or the other editor was thinking of the rhytina, which is an extinct mammal from that area.--Shantavira|feed me 07:36, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Unlikely. Steller's sea cows were endemic to the Commander Islands, which isn't anywhere near Hawaii. -- O BSIDIAN  †  S OUL  07:48, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Responding to Prayer Requests
When a religious friend tells me about a problem they are facing (for example, their grandmother is very ill) and asks me to support them by praying, the answer which comes to my mind is "I am so very sorry but I don't believe in prayer".

I never give this sort of answer because although it is straightforward and truthful, I think it is TOTALLY useless, if not worse than useless, to the person who made the request.

Under these circumstances, is there any type of response that is compassionate and honest and helpful to the person who made the request? Thank you, CBHA (talk) 05:56, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

The WP Reference Desk is not a Citizens' Advice Bureau. Our defined role can be stretched, but only so far, and this type of question is clearly well beyond the elastic limit. Questions are not mountains: we must rise above the temptation to answer any and all questions simply "because they are there". Restraint is good. Less is more. Silence is golden. We are not all things to all men. Is any of this making any sense? ♬ Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  08:47, 14 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Tell them that you would be happy to support them in any way, but please excuse you from praying, because you do not believe in prayer, and you don't practice what you do not believe in. Plasmic Physics (talk) 06:09, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * How about telling them that the next time you pray you'll be sure to mention their grandmother? 203.27.72.5 (talk) 06:15, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That's not honest, it's lying by omission. Plasmic Physics (talk) 06:22, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It's more of an economical truth than a terminological inexactitude. 203.27.72.5 (talk) 06:46, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * What is the difference between that, and lying by omission? Plasmic Physics (talk) 07:22, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Lying by omission is an oxymoron, since a lie is delivering a false statement, and an omission is not delivering a statement at all. 203.27.72.5 (talk) 07:48, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * This kind of question, and the inevitable discussion that follows it, is precisely what the RD is unsuited to answer. I suggest asking someone close to you who knows you in real life. Shadowjams (talk) 06:31, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Precisely, Shadowjams. That is, until you also joined in the dishing up of inappropriate advice.  I'm hatting this.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  08:47, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

"I don't pray, but I hope it all turns out well for you." HiLo48 (talk) 08:12, 14 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The OP needs to decide what's more important: To be selflessly supportive in someone's time of need by telling them a "little white lie", or to selfishly impose his personal belief on them and probably make them feel worse than they already do. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:17, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I find it difficult to believe that any good Christian would be offended by "I'll keep him in my thoughts". I would be uncomfortable counselling someone to break the Commandment about bearing false witness (promising to pray for someone is a serious matter) when there's a kind and honest alternative. Pretending to pray, or saying you will when you won't, seems disrespectful to Christianity to me. --NellieBly (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * A candid statement disparaging prayer is not responsive to your friend's request for limited assistance in a difficult situation. Your friend did not ask if you believe in prayer, and your rejection of prayer is likely to be troubling to your friend, who will be disturbed by your rejection of faith.  It's better to have a supportive statement that does not specifically refer to prayer, such as, "I will keep your grandmother in my heart and remember her need.  She is very important to me."  John M Baker (talk) 15:20, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

relocated the above 3 comments under the hat. &mdash; Lomn 15:51, 14 August 2012 (UTC)


 * If it makes any difference, I really would like to know, too. I face the same issue more and more as I get older, and I never know what to say. Are the dynamics of personal interactions really not within the realm of humanities, or are they perhaps the most central of all humanities? Has there ever been another instance of this kind of question being considered unsuitable? People ask for personal advice for difficult social situations all the time, and this is the first I've seen hatted. 75.166.207.214 (talk) 09:13, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * We're not supposed to answer requests for advice or opinions, which is what this question is. That being said, we don't always practice what we preach in that regard, which is why you've seen examples to the contrary. For my part, I shouldn't have commented on this thread and it was appropriate for Jack to close it. 203.27.72.5 (talk) 09:18, 14 August 2012 (UTC)


 * 75.166.207.214, I'll respond to you on the Talk page. Please meet me over there.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  09:40, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The Reference Desk is supposed to be for questions with factual answers. Questions without factual answers are important, and worth asking.  But not at the Wikipedia Reference Desk.  Kind of like soccer is an important game, and worth playing... but not in the classroom.  No disparagement against the question or the asker is implied; questions without factual answers are removed from the Reference Desk nearly every day. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 18:20, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * There is no mention of any prohibition against personal advice in WP:RDG, only professional medical and legal advice. There is no mention of any prohibition against questions without factual answers. There is no evidence that there is not a factual answer to the question. It would be entirely within reason for a psychology or sociology researcher to explore what kind of interactions between grieving or anxious people and others with different religious beliefs result in the most parsimonious outcomes. I will be happy to discuss this further on the talk page, but I think it's important to say here that the hatting and the very verbose and patronising manner in which this was hatted was wrong. 75.166.207.214 (talk) 22:21, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The OP needs to put compassion for his friend ahead of his need to force his religion viewpoint on his friend, and the problem will fix itself. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:34, 14 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I have to agree with Jack on this one. I'm fairly inclusionist on which questions we should entertain here, but I'm afraid this one is entirely two subjective and personal for us to be able to deliver any kind of empirical or certain answer.  Once it's left that sphere, it's pretty clearly out of our pervue here.  While I think all of us who commit time to responding here regularly probably have figured that only a fraction of the answer go towards improving an article, we still out to pay face value to the idea that it is by answering only questions which fall in the realm of Wikipedia's factual, not subjective, focus.  In short, this is not a forum.  If anyone has advice for the OP, I think they should send it via talk page (even that is strictly not Wikipedia's purpose, but it's more or less harmless and better there than here, imo).   Just remember to source. ;D Snow (talk) 00:07, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Well that was a good lesson on how not to not answer a question. Below is an obvious and legitimate way to answer it. μηδείς (talk) 02:04, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

What serious thinkers have said on atheists and prayer

I think this is a very legitimate issue of philosophy, specifically etiquette, as a branch of ethics. Ayn Rand was an atheist who repeatedly made the point that saying things like God bless you are a way of saying "you are a great value to me", or "I wish you the highest." Google Ayn Rand on God Bless You. That shows concern for people as individuals in their own terms. Presumably some of the New Atheists would think that something like not compromising your principles is more important. Christopher Hitchens asked that people not pray for him as he was dying. μηδείς (talk) 02:00, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * And in the flip side of the original question here, someone might be inclined to tell Hitchens, "OK, I won't," and then go ahead and do so anyway, privately. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:15, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

See, , and. 203.27.72.5 (talk) 04:49, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Here is some detailed exposition on the topic by someone who has obviously thought about it enough to churn out several pages each. There is more at  (that host is in our spam filter for some reason) and it's an even better essay in my opinion. Here are some briefer forum suggestions.  75.166.207.214 (talk) 03:52, 15 August 2012 (UTC) [copied here from talk by μηδείς (talk) 04:51, 15 August 2012 (UTC)]

The famous physicist Niels Bohr purportedly had a horseshoe nailed above the door to his office. When visitors asked why he had it there, he said "it's supposed to bring good luck". When the visitors then asked him whether as a scientific guy, he really believed such a silly superstition, he'd reply "of course I don't believe in it, but it's supposed to work whether you believe in it or not". I guess you could treat the request for prayer as similar to a request to keep a horseshoe in your office, and go along with it if it wasn't too much hassle, even if you didn't believe in it. 67.122.211.84 (talk) 21:12, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Good answer! 75.166.207.214 (talk) 00:14, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * When rational people buy lottery tickets, they know at the outset that there's an extremely slim chance of them winning anything significant. They buy the ticket not because they believe they're going to win, but because not to do so would give them no chance at all.  --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  03:44, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I use the phrase "I will keep you/them in my thoughts" .Hotclaws (talk) 14:38, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Question about the validity of marriage
Here is a hypothetical situation that struck my curiosity. Let's say that a man and woman get married. This is, let's say, in the USA and in a state that forbids same sex marriages. During the course of their marriage, one spouse (let's just say, the husband) has a sex-change operation. He is now legally a female. What happens to the status (validity) of that marriage? Does it remain the same, as if nothing happened and nothing changed? Or does the sex-change operation somehow invalidate the marriage? I am just curious about this situation, even though it is bizarre and unlikely. Any ideas? Or, has this actually ever happened in real life somewhere? I am asking about the legal status and validity, not moral or religious or otherwise. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * According to this FAQ, marriage laws are based on the legal gender of the people at the time of their marriage, so the marriage remains valid even if one partner later changes to a different legal gender. It does happen from time to time; here's an article from ABC News with a biography of one such couple.  For transgender people who fall in love after their transition, the legal question depends on (a) whether their state allows same-sex marriage, and (b) whether their state allows legal changes of gender.  Ironically, this means that in the most conservative states, where no legal change of gender is permitted, gay and lesbian transgender people are getting legal same-sex marriages that other gay and lesbian people can't get.  -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 18:06, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that's "ironic". It makes perfect sense if you look at it the way they do.  From the point of view of the lawmakers in those states, these are not same-sex marriages at all.  To them, you have a man and a woman, except one of them (let's say th man) got some strange ideas in his head that led him to undergo cosmetic surgery.  Odd, maybe, but not an impediment to marriage.  The woman is not specially privileged because her husband is trans &mdash; she could have married any man, not just one who had done the cosmetic procedure.  --Trovatore (talk) 18:30, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Iran goes about this the other way around. There homosexuality and transvestism is a death penalty crime, and same sex marriages are not happening any time soon, if ever. But sex reassignment surgery is actually encouraged and completely legal, since after changing legal genders, future marriages will not be same-sex anymore (only applies if the transgender people in question are heterosexual of course).-- O BSIDIAN  †  S OUL  18:45, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Though I mostly agree with all of the above, it's also notable that laws, even in just the U.S. vary considerably in this regard, and that there federal, state, and even sometimes local precedents that routinely come into conflict as different legal and governmental bodies try to decide who the ultimate arbiter is (though States do mostly dominate influence on the issue, but can vary considerably amongst themselves). Also note that in most cases, regardless of external factors influencing changes in marital status, almost any partner could sue for divorce citing irreconcilable differences caused by the other spouse; in rare cases they might even be able to get an annulment if their partner was in transition or intending to transition.  Though again, considerable variation here.  Snow (talk) 23:52, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * This question is of some importance in the UK. Note first of all that having a sex-change operation doesn't legally change one's gender. In the UK a legal change of gender occurs on granting of a gender recognition certificate, but this can't be granted to a person who is currently married. So a married person wishing to change gender legally has to have their marriage dissolved, and the couple can afterwards have a civil partnership. The awkwardness of this procedure is one argument in favour of introducing equal marriage (that is, marriage without regard to the gender of those involved) in the UK. --rossb (talk) 22:51, 15 August 2012 (UTC)