Talk:Atheist manifesto

from redirect page to disambiguation page

This was originally a redirect page to Michel Onfray, which was questionable to begin with, imho.

I've changed the page into a disambiguation page between Onfray and Dutch philosopher Herman Philipse.

How Atheist Manifesto got to be a redirect to Michel Onfray

This is speculation, but the original intent of the person creating the redirect clearly must have been with Onfray's work Traité d'athéologie : Physique de la métaphysique in the back of his mind. Since there was no topic page about the work itself, he redirected to the author. Fair enough, as far as it goes.

This title first appeared in English translation (by Jeremy Leggatt) as Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This is obviously not a literal translation of the French title at all--which is fine, titles are often rendered differently by foreign publishing houses to make sense to readers in that culture.

A literal translation of the title might have been, Treatise on Atheology: the Physics of Metaphysics. Note that atheology is just as rare in English (had to go to my unabridged to confirm it) as it is in French (not in the big Larousse, nor in the Dict. de l'Academie Française, 9ème ed.) and the English rendering of the title makes more sense (imho) in our market, and I have no quibble with that.

The point being, though, that the strength of the connection between the English phrase "Atheist Manifesto" and Michel Onfray is a bit tenuous, second-hand one might say, as it has no basis in the original title, but only in the way one translator (or publishing house) decided to render it in English. Is that strong enough a connection to be the basis for a redirect page? That's not clear on the Wikipedia:Disambiguation page, it's just too fine a point, probably.

Connection with Herman Philipse

Philipse has a work entitled Atheistisch manifest & De onredelijkheid van religie which hasn't been translated. In English, this would literally be Atheist Manifesto and the unreasonableness of religion. That seems to rate at least as highly connected to the English phrase "Atheist Manifesto" as the French work does, if not more so.

Furthermore, this work is actually of some note, since it has been in the news lately in connection with the influence it had on Dutch-Somali immigrant and MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who worked with Theo van Gogh on a film which eventually got him murdered by extremists. So if anyone were going to be the sole beneficiary of a redirect of Atheist Manifesto it ought to have been Philipse and not Onfray.

to disambiguate or not to disambiguate

I considered the warning about partial title matches on the Wikipedia:Disambiguation page, and decided that this case meets the test of being a disambiguation page, since there is there is "significant risk of confusion" of the two works, and none of the other caveats seem relevant.

The only thing that bothers me, is that ideally a disambig page should lead to something like a "Atheist Manifesto (Onfray)" and a "Atheist Manifesto (Philipse)" but neither of these pages exist, or are likely to. So I think this is the best compromise--at least the best I could come up with. It's certainly better than an absolute redirect to Onfray, but I welcome comments by editors with more experience in the niceties of disambiguation. Mathglot (talk) 06:15, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's page had a dead link to The Atheist Manifesto which indicates that the page did once exist. I redirected the dead link to this page.Kwenchin (talk) 12:06, 8 February 2010 (UTC)