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Crick: In or Out?

RS would like to see Francis Crick in this list. It is true that several sources call him an atheist. However, he calls himself an agnostic and skeptic, with a strong inclination toward atheism. In other words, he is almost an atheist--but still not an atheist, by his own admission. I contend that no source for Crick's beliefs and irreligious identity is more reliable than Crick himself. Thus, Crick's statement, which amounts to "I am not quite an atheist," trumps identifications made elsewhere. Nick Graves (talk) 23:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

(I may as well put this under this section as any...)

Here's a quote from a completely unambiguous atheist with whom my username has some affinity. I feel it has some relevance, though Nick will doubt it.

"If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands."

Oolon (talk) 09:26, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Ref Nick's "amounts to "I am not quite an atheist""... looks like you're deciding where the atheistic Rubicon lies. <shrug>

Oolon (talk) 09:34, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Rohirok (talk) 10:31, 1 May 2008 (UTC) (AKA Nick Graves)

If that contraption could claim to be a duck, would we have to include it on a list of such? Ilkali (talk) 11:50, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

It's an apples and oranges comparison, of course. Whether someone is or is not an atheist is not a matter of conformity with scientifically defined species characteristics. A sense of self-identity has nothing to do with whether a thing is a duck (or a human organism, for that matter), but it does have a lot to do with whether someone is an atheist. If someone says "I don't believe in God," but also says "I'm not an atheist, I'm an agnostic," they're an agnostic, even if you would say they're an atheist because they don't believe in God. Rohirok (talk) 13:31, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Nick said: "Whether someone is or is not an atheist is not a matter of conformity with scientifically defined species characteristics." True. But why is it not a matter of conformity with dictionary definitions? As I've said before, doubtless Hitler considered himself a nice bloke. By your reasoning, a man (admittedly insane) who considered himself an orangutan should be classified (in a list such as this) as an example of Pongo pygmaeus. While 'what you think you are' should have some bearing, it is not fundamental. We are slotting people into categories, not forming the category around them, which is why the definitions are central for inclusion decisions. So an atheist, like an orangutan, is something you are (or aren't), and what they consider themselves to be is of secondary importance (note, not totally unimportant).

Imagine trying to compile a list of terrorist organisations. The immediate cry of "but they're freedom fighters!" may ring out. But whatever they consider themselves, if they blow up pubs or hijack aircraft, then they fit the definition, no?

Oook.

Oolon (talk) 14:26, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

"If someone says "I don't believe in God," but also says "I'm not an atheist, I'm an agnostic," they're an agnostic". Self-identity has nothing to do with whether a person is an atheist. It's just not part of the definition. If somebody believes in neither the existence or non-existence of gods, he is a weak atheist. The only relevance self-identification has is in that it gives us a clue about the person's position. It doesn't magically trump self-description. Ilkali (talk) 14:39, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

"The" definition? There's no such thing, any more than there is such a thing as the definition of a Christian, or the definition of a Jew. There are different, conflicting definitions, and different people use the word to mean different things. It's easy enough to sit in an armchair, pick your preferred meaning for the word, and then go on to apply the label atheist to anyone who meets that definition, nevermind what they have to say about their own identity. But such a method goes against the admittedly untidy way the word is used in the real world. Are we to label as an atheist biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, someone who states quite clearly that he does not believe in God--but who has just as clearly called himself an agnostic, but never an atheist--just because his position happens to conform with one of the definitions of the word? Or will we respect his choice of identity? It seems to me that folks think we should come up with a canonical definition for the word, and cleave steadfastly to that one, regardless of reliable sources disputing it, and regardless of whether its application flies in the face of usage made by the subjects themselves. My position is that, in our humble role as Wikipedia editors, we have no authority to make a ruling as to the definition of atheism, or formulate our own judgments that such and such position constitutes atheism, when that judgment is a demonstrably contentious one. Rather we are to simply report neutrally and faithfully the information provided in reliable sources. So in the cases of self-described agnostics like Ehrman, Darrow, Einstein and others, we are not justified in calling them atheists here, because the most reliable sources for their position and identity (the persons themselves) denied having that postion and identity, either explicitly or implicitly. Rohirok (talk) 16:55, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

"The" definition? There's no such thing, any more than there is such a thing as the definition of a Christian, or the definition of a Jew. There are different, conflicting definitions". You're quibbling. The definition of weak atheism is clear. The definition of strong atheism is clear. And neither involves self-identification.

"It's easy enough to [...] pick your preferred meaning for the word, and then go on to apply the label atheist to anyone who [...]", "It seems to me that folks think we should come up with a canonical definition for the word", "we have no authority to make a ruling as to the definition of atheism". Are you ever going to stop flogging that horse? I have never expressed the view that we should arbitrate on what 'atheist' means. I have clearly and repeatedly said that we should resolve the ambiguity problem by being explicit and using terms like weak/strong atheism.

"Are we to label as an atheist biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, someone who states quite clearly that he does not believe in God". If we have reason to think that he doesn't believe in any gods, then we are to label him as a weak atheist.

"in the cases of self-described agnostics [...], we are not justified in calling them atheists here, because the most reliable sources for their position and identity (the persons themselves) denied having that postion and identity, either explicitly or implicitly". How do you implicitly deny being an atheist? By saying something that contradicts Nick Graves' definition? Does "I am an agnostic" entail "I am not an atheist" for all possible meanings of each term?

Here are some questions that I'm asking again because you ignored them the first time: What information do you think people are looking for when they visit this page? And what would you do with someone who labelled himself an agnostic atheist? Ilkali (talk) 17:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[unindent] Ilkali, you are begging the question when you say that "weak atheists" are atheists. Certainly, the term has been clearly defined, but this does not mean that it has been generally adopted or accepted as a genuine type of atheism, nor does it mean we are justified in automatically concluding that a God-nonbeliever is an atheist. Of course, people who come here would expect to find a list of atheists. But, what is an atheist? You say that nonbelievers in gods are atheists. And of course, you're right from a certain point of view. From another point of view, they are not. Nick Graves (talk) 23:53, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

"Ilkali, you are begging the question when you say that "weak atheists" are atheists". Where did I say that? I haven't asserted that weak atheists are a subset of atheists for all interpretations of 'atheist'. I've asserted that 'weak atheist' is a meaningful, useful and unambiguous term.

"nor does it mean we are justified in automatically concluding that a God-nonbeliever is an atheist". How many times do I have to say this? I have never expressed the view that we should arbitrate on what 'atheist' means. I'm not talking about choosing criteria for labelling people as atheists, I'm talking about sidestepping the issue by assigning labels like 'weak atheist' and 'strong atheist'.

You say that nonbelievers in gods are atheists. Palm -> face. Ilkali (talk) 06:45, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Ilkali, I do not think we should adopt the term "weak atheist" for this list because there is substantial disagreement as to whether it's an accurate term. Numerous sources contradict the claim that a "weak atheist" is even an atheist at all. Furthermore, it is especially problematic to label a living person as any type of atheist ("weak" or otherwise) on the basis of statements of mere nonbelief, since atheists are still much maligned, and application of the term could be harmful to persons so labeled. See WP:BLP. Nick Graves (talk) 14:34, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

"I do not think we should adopt the term "weak atheist" for this list because there is substantial disagreement as to whether it's an accurate term". "accurate" isn't meaningful here. Adjectives aren't necessarily intersective; consider that a 'former cricketer' isn't a cricketer and a 'fierce debater' isn't necessarily fierce. We can use the term 'weak atheist' without asserting that its denotation is a subset of that of 'atheist'.

"it is especially problematic to label a living person as any type of atheist ("weak" or otherwise) on the basis of statements of mere nonbelief, since atheists are still much maligned, and application of the term could be harmful to persons so labeled". But we have no problem with labelling them atheists for saying they believe gods don't exist? How do you resolve this inconsistency?

I disagree strongly with the idea that we shouldn't call a duck a duck just because it thinks 'mallard' is more fashionable. Ilkali (talk) 16:12, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I think "accurate" is meaningful here, since to label someone a "weak atheist" is to consider the person so labeled an atheist of a certain type (whereas "former cricketer" does not mean someone is considered to (currently) be a cricketer, and "fierce debater" does not mean someone is considered to be a fierce person). All uses of the term "weak atheism" that I have seen have used it in such a way that it is considered a subset of atheism. Its use is more akin to, for example, "conservative Republican," where a person so labeled is represented as a type of Republican.

Persons who believe gods don't exist are uncontroversially regarded as atheists. It is a position that, no matter which of the common definitions is used, qualifies as atheistic. Persons who merely disbelieve in gods are not uncontroversially regarded as atheists. According to Michael Martin, George Smith, and probably the majority of self-described atheists, such persons are atheists. According to Ted Drange, Fred Edwords, and probably the majority of self-described agnostics (not to mention a sizable proportion of theists), such perseons are not atheists. Given this controversy, and in light of the importance of being especially careful about information regarding living persons (particularly with regard to religious belief/nonbelief) it is important for us to take a conservative approach toward labeling such persons as atheists (with or without the "weak" qualifier).

The duck/mallard comparison is not applicable. There is no controversy about whether or not a mallard is or is not a duck. There is controversy about whether all god-nonbelievers are necessarily atheists. Nick Graves (talk) 02:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

"I think "accurate" is meaningful here, since to label someone a "weak atheist" is to consider the person so labeled an atheist of a certain type". Only if we treat 'weak' as an intersective modifier, and why would we? The fact that so many people consider 'atheist' to mean the same as 'strong atheist' is prima facie evidence against that position.

"whereas "former cricketer" does not mean someone is considered to (currently) be a cricketer, and "fierce debater" does not mean someone is considered to be a fierce person". Yes, because they're non-intersective. That's kind of the point I was making.

"Persons who believe gods don't exist are uncontroversially regarded as atheists". Ugh, you're back on this again? I'm aware of that, Nick! I am not proposing that we arbitrate on what 'atheist' means!

"There is no controversy about whether or not a mallard is or is not a duck. There is controversy about whether all god-nonbelievers are necessarily atheists". So labelling someone in such a way that it could harm their reputation is only a problem if the label is appropriate for all its major interpretations? Your objection to calling people weak/strong atheists is based on the idea that the very association with the word 'atheist' can be harmful to someone who doesn't identify with it. Why is it only okay to be harmful to strong atheists?

And again, you can't have inclusion criteria without tacitly arbitrating on what the word means. Despite all the lecturing you've done, you're the one guilty of that, not me. When you put X in a nontheist list rather than an atheist list, you are asserting that he is not an atheist. People expect membership in lists to be conditioned by genuine identity, such that people that we know to have the same position will be in the same list. Your criteria confound that expectation.

I'm going to ask for the third time: What information do you think people are looking for when they visit this page, and what would you do with someone who labelled himself an agnostic atheist? Ilkali (talk) 06:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Compare: "That's not gold--it's fool's gold" vs. "He's not an atheist--he's a weak atheist." The first makes perfect sense, whereas the second is a self-contradiction. Fool's gold is understood to be not gold at all. However, for those who adopt the strong/weak atheism distinction, weak atheism is a type of atheism. Those who consider atheism to be the assertion of the nonexistence of deities (in other words, what some others might term "strong atheism") do not adopt the strong/weak atheism distinction. For them, the "strong" specification is unnecessary, and the term "weak atheism" is an inappropriate label, since it refers to a position that is not atheism at all.

Even if you were right that "weak atheists" were not a subset of atheists, this undermines the case for their inclusion in this list. If "weak atheists" are not really atheists, then we would no more expect them on a list of atheists than we would expect fool's gold to be included in a list of varieties of gold.

Why the "ugh!" in response to my statement that "Persons who believe gods don't exist are uncontroversially regarded as atheists"? You had asked why such persons were included, whereas mere nonbelievers (sans identification as "atheists" in reliable sources) are not, and stated that this practice was inconsistent. I gave you what you asked for--a justification for considering these cases differently.

You say that you are not proposing that we arbitrate on what the meaning of atheist is. Yet you support including all persons who express mere nonbelief in deities. That is arbitrating on the meaning. It is categorizing someone as an atheist (based on a certain definition, and rejecting another) when there is signficant disagreement over whether such a position constitutes atheism. Such categorization is potentially harmful to persons, since it could justifiably be viewed as inaccurate labeling of a person's irreligious identity. In contrast, categorizing someone as an atheist when they have asserted the nonexistence of gods is not potentially harmful, since it cannot be justifiably viewed as inaccurate labeling, since by all standard definitions of the word, it qualifies as an atheistic positin. There are plenty of cases where someone has expressed nonbelief in deities, but has gone on to stress that such a position is not atheistic, but some nontheistic alternative (most likely agnosticism). I am unaware of any cases in which someone has denied deities, yet asserted that such is not atheism. If they did, it would be an exceptional claim, inconsistent with all standard definitions of the word, and unlikely to be affirmed by the majority of reliable sources that might report on such a person's beliefs and identity. Regardless, if it is inconsistent to include all god-deniers, but exclude all god-nonbelievers who call themselves agnostics or who are not identified as atheists in a reliable source, then the proper course of action in light of WP:BLP would be to exclude all god-deniers sans ID as atheist in reliable sources, rather than include all god-nonbelievers sans ID as atheist in reliable sources. In other words, an even more conservative approach would be in order, not the more liberal one you have supported.

Inclusion criteria for this list can (and do) make identifications of atheists without arbitrating between the two major definitions of atheist. By deferring to what reliable sources report, we avoid such arbitration. "Weak atheists" are not automatically excluded, as such persons are often justifiably identified as atheists, either by themselves, or by secondary, reliable sources. Nor are mere god-nonbelievers automatically included, as they are frequently labeled as agnostics, and may justifiably be considered members of a set that is distinct from, rather than a subset of, atheists.

Inclusion on the list of nontheists does not imply that such a person is not an atheist. They may or may not be atheists, depending on what definition is used, and this is (or was) made clear in the intro to that list. As I've said before, of course people expect to find atheists on this list. But what is a genuine atheist? What is "genuine identity" with regard to atheism? It's not a settled issue, and despite your claims that you do not propose that we arbitrate on the meaning of atheist, your support for including all god-nonbelievers does exactly that. I do not oppose including someone who calls herself an "agnostic atheist." Nick Graves (talk) 02:48, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

"Compare: "That's not gold--it's fool's gold" vs. "He's not an atheist--he's a weak atheist." The first makes perfect sense, whereas the second is a self-contradiction". Not at all. Any person hearing it would sensibly assume that 'atheist' was being used to mean the same as 'strong atheist'.

"Those who consider atheism to be the assertion of the nonexistence of deities (in other words, what some others might term "strong atheism") do not adopt the strong/weak atheism distinction". Regardless of whether they use the terminology themselves or however they may feel about its construction, they are able to process its meaning, just like those in favor of abortion rights are able to process 'pro-life', despite it being a horrible misnomer. That's how language works. Not all meaning is compositional.

"Even if you were right that "weak atheists" were not a subset of atheists [...]". Rein in your POV there, Nick. My claim is not "weak atheists are not a subset of atheists", my claim is "weak atheists are not a subset of atheists for all interpretations of 'atheist'". And that's pretty obvious, really. My more important claim is that neutral resources such as Wikipedia can use the term without implicitly arbitrating on what 'atheist' means.

"then we would no more expect them on a list of atheists than [...]". My position has never been that weak atheists should appear undifferentiated on a 'List of atheists'. I favor a 'List of nontheists' page that directs users to more specific pages, such as 'List of strong atheists', etc. List of atheists would probably redirect there.

"You had asked why such persons were included, whereas mere nonbelievers [...] are not, and stated that this practice was inconsistent". No, I asked why defamation of character wasn't considered an issue for strong atheists.

"Yet you support including all persons who express mere nonbelief in deities". For the love of gods, Nick. Stop jumping to conclusions about what I support. I support the things I say I support.

"categorizing someone as an atheist when they have asserted the nonexistence of gods is not potentially harmful, since it cannot be justifiably viewed as inaccurate labeling". How does that follow? There are plenty of people who choose not to use the A-word because of the connotations it carries. Those connotations can harm a strong atheist as much as a weak atheist.

"Inclusion criteria for this list can (and do) make identifications of atheists without arbitrating between the two major definitions of atheist. By deferring to what reliable sources report, we avoid such arbitration". Except that you don't just defer to what reliable sources report. You include people who express strong atheistic stances, even if nobody uses the word 'atheist' about them. It doesn't matter if your reasoning is that weak atheists are not uncontroversially atheists - the implication is that they are not.

"Inclusion on the list of nontheists does not imply that such a person is not an atheist". I disagree. I contend that the majority expect lists to be defined such that if two people verifiably have the same stance, they are in the same list.

"I do not oppose including someone who calls herself an "agnostic atheist."". Is it the case for everyone that 'agnostic atheist' is a subset of 'atheist'? Ilkali (talk) 05:52, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

We will not make any progress in this discussion until I first understand what your position is. So please set me straight: Specifically what change(s) do you propose we make? Nick Graves (talk) 23:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to change my proposal based on the thoughts expressed in various places below. I propose that we have a set of lists of nontheists, divided according to the person's field of notability (sports, television, etc). In each list, some denotational convention (perhaps coloring of names or somesuch) will specify each person's stance as indicated by the sources - strong atheist, weak atheist, agnostic, ignostic, etc, whatever. No more List of atheists, List of agnostics, List of nontheists, etc. I think what people want when they look for a list of atheists is just a list of people who don't believe in gods, and currently that's distributed across several different pages by criteria that are, if the discussion here is any indication, not universally satisfying. The kinds of details that separate 'atheists' from 'agnostics' from 'nontheists' are controversial and, ultimately, relatively unimportant. Ilkali (talk) 09:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

How many?

For anyone who cares: I've just done a quick c&p into Word. We currently have 389 entries. So I expect we'll break the 400 mark by the end of today.

I'll get the champagne, and you lot can figure out how best to split this massive page!

Oolon (talk) 09:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Oolon, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: your prolific, high-quality additions to this list are commendable. Just off the top of my head, I'd estimate that you're personally responsible for adding between 10 and 15% of the names to this list, and in a very short period, too. Well done! Rohirok (talk) 13:37, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, looks like about 133, from a quick count. That's about 1/3rd. Damn! Wow! Rohirok (talk) 13:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Wow! And, thanks for the commendations! (No idea what a 'barnstar' is, but thanks for it anyway!) Heh, I said you chaps hadn't been trying! :-D To be fair, I've been using my Open University (online) library for some strategic searches. This 'ere ODNB has been excellent, it even gives me the citation that just needs a little tweaking. My other 'cheat' is having an office job, so in between occasional real work I can sit in front of the pc and pretend!

Cheers folks! Oolon (talk) 14:02, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, so that's your secret! My own method has been Google, which requires a fair deal of slogging through the unreliable sources to get to the good ones. I also use academic searches through online college library resources, but that too requires a fair deal of slogging to get to the one or two relevant sentences. Nick Graves (talk) 14:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Yup. I Google too, with Google News for recent comments.

And I've just done a recount: currently 435. At what point should we consider splitting the page? Oolon (talk) 08:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

WHEN is someone an atheist?

Take Antony Flew. Pretty much an atheist all his life. Yet, owing to recent controversy, he's not in here. Should he be here?

By the same (though flipped-over) token, I suspect many people would raise an eyebrow at the inclusion here of Graham Greene. Catholic novelist, right? And yet:

"Though Greene later objected to being called a 'Catholic novelist', he became celebrated for employing religious themes in his works, praised by Catholic critics during his lifetime for the powerful way in which his novels explore the subjects of sin, damnation, evil, and divine forgiveness. But Greene's relationship with the church was never easy, and he was often critical of the religion. In his last years he began referring to himself as a 'Catholic atheist' (Shelden, 6)." Michael Shelden: 'Greene, (Henry) Graham (1904–1991)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2006 [1] (accessed 1 May 2008).

Seems to me that if Flew is barred for a recent (though hotly debated) change of heart, then Greene should go in -- seems he was an atheist to his dying day, though the 'from' started late-ish.

But it raises a bigger question (to which I doubt there is an answer): What of people like Flew? Or someone who goes through an atheist period? (I came across a politician in Hansard who referred to having been "an agnostic, an atheist, and now a humanist". Aside from that being rather bizarre, do we only take what they end up as as what they 'are'? Did Constantine's deathbed conversion make him a Christian?

Anyway, with plenty of precedent, I can't see why Greene shouldn't go in, so in he goes. There'll be raised eyebrows, but that is due to our criteria, not the solidity of the source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oolon Colluphid (talk • contribs) 11:11, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

For living persons, it's probably best to give their current state. For dead people I think it has to be examined case by case. If a person was a notable theist for 90% of his life and a notable atheist for 10%, I'd say he should be in both lists, with each specifying the span in which the label applied. Ilkali (talk) 11:41, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The standard here has not been stated explicitly, as far as I know, though I think the practice is is as follows: Include living persons only if they are currently atheists. The presumption is that the latest available identification in a reliable source represents their current status. So Flew is out, and is in List of former atheists instead. For dead persons, the standard has been to list their presumed status at death. Even if they were atheists most of their lives, if they later "recanted" atheism, they are not included. Rohirok (talk) 13:21, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

"The standard has been to list their presumed status at death." Hot damn! You mean we've legitimately netted Graham Greene?! Oolon (talk) 14:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Who is an atheist?

Is it acceptable to list someone as an atheist here if they have stated that they do not believe in God/deities? In other words, is a statement of nonbelief in God/deities sufficient for inclusion, even if we have no reliable sources that specifically identify that person as an atheist? What if that same person calls themselves an agnostic? What if that same person specifically denies being an atheist? In what ways are neutrality and BLP policies applicable?

If you're going to continue arguing on this issue, could you please respond to the comments I make? Hell, it'd be nice if you just read them. You're again targeting a position that I've never espoused and have, in fact, explicitly denied holding. Ilkali (talk) 18:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

i generally find 'list of notable X' articles to be a waste of time. the most that should be reserved is a category. if the person in question is an atheist, they fall in the category, and the category becomes the list. since the article is where their ostensible atheism or lack thereof should be described, if the properly sourced material within that person's article accurately identifies them as an atheist, then all is good. the debates of who is or is not an atheist and by what definition belong, ultimately, on each of the destination articles, not in a separate list that may contain citations and references that are not in the person's article (which happens frequently). are my comments helpful? god knows! Anastrophe (talk) 18:34, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Please keep it civil, Ilkali. I'm not sure what position you think I'm incorrectly attributing to you. I'll take another look at what you've written and see what I might be missing. In the mean time, please note that the RfC summary I wrote is in regards to issues brought up by other editors, and not just you. Nick Graves (talk) 23:27, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

It's easy: When I've given a proposal, explain why you think it's bad. When I ask a question, answer it. Otherwise stop pretending to be discussing this. Ilkali (talk) 06:36, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I have found lists worthwhile. They often contain material not found in categories, such as a lead summarizing the topic and bringing attention to specific points, and illustrations. There is room, I think, for both categories and lists.

As to self-identifications as "atheist," "agnostic," "nontheist," etc., it seems reasonable to honor these, especially given the connotations with which they are often fraught and the potential consequences for the individuals concerned. Documentation standards should be the normal ones that apply to any topic. Nihil novi (talk) 02:45, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

• I agree with Anastrophe's point that these lists are a waste of time, and raise it to them being unencyclopaedic. Faith (talk) 14:10, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

in response to RfC: I hate to complicate this issue any, but it seems to me that you need to consider what the term 'Atheist' has a very flexible and contextual meaning. for instance, atheist can refer to someone who (for philosophical reasons) denies that there can be a god, or to someone who (for experiential reasons) denies that we can know there is a god, or to someone who (as in some forms of taoism, buddhism, and hinduism) has faith in something that does not fit any standard conception of a god. I mean, it hardly seems fair to lump Shelley and Shunryu Suzuki into the same category. perhaps classifying individuals according to some typology of atheism?--Ludwigs2 (talk) 21:52, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem of self-identification

Treating a person's use of self-label as final and authoritative is POVed and arbitrary. Consider this hypothetical: a noteworthy person says, in all apparent seriousness, "I am an atheist. But I believe in God!" What are we to do with this statement? Should they be listed as an atheist? A theist? Both? Does the interpretation of third parties matter? Does the interpretation of our own editors matter? The same principles that apply to that hypothetical should apply equally to the actual cases we deal with.

A "list of atheists" is useful only so long as it is completely consistent about what constitutes "atheism", or so long as it is completely explicit about what each individual usage of "atheism" denotes for each person. Neither seems to be the case here, making this list a violation both of policies like WP:NOR (original synthesis of information) and of commonsensical understandings of theism and atheism.

If a word has more than one accepted definition, or if its definition is disputed, then it is misleading and intellectually dishonest to conflate these different uses under a singular, monolithic term like "atheist". And it is doubly misleading to do so in a dichotomous way, by treating "atheist" and "agnostic" as mutually exclusive terms despite the broad disagreement on this matter: we refuse to list as atheists any people "who choose a label besides atheist for themselves with regards to their position on the existence of deities, even if they have been identified elsewhere as atheists", which has this effect:

A. If someone says "I don't believe in God.", they are (perhaps) listed as atheists.

B. If someone says "I don't believe in God. Also, I'm an agnostic.", they are listed as agnostics instead of atheists.

C. If someone says "I don't believe in God. I'm an adeist.", they aren't listed anywhere.

This is an incoherent situation. It doesn't tell us anything either about what these people believe (since someone can have exactly the same beliefs and yet be listed on only one page or the other depending solely on arbitrary terminology choice), and it doesn't even tell us anything about how the terms in questions are used (since we aren't consistent in our own standards for how atheist should be used, or explicit in noting how it is used).

Needed steps:

1. This list must be changed to a "List of people identified as atheists". Why? For starters, if the broader definition of atheism is correct (as nontheism), then anyone who doesn't believe in deities is an atheist, including, perhaps, all people living in animistic societies. I don't believe this definition is (or should be) correct, but my belief is irrelevent: Wikipedia's only neutral way of dealing with a contentious term is to refrain from weighing in on the term itself, and instead to simply report neutrally on the usage of others.
2. Detail what is meant by "atheist" for every single entry. Are they listed because they self-identify as "atheist"? Because their friends/family identified them as such? Because their political enemies identified them as such? Because they professed beliefs (such as nontheism or antireligiosity) which are commonly deemed atheistic? Some combination of these factors?
3. We should consider using a simple, user-friendly table rather than a generic list. This will allow us to differentiate the different forms of "atheism", and the different qualifying standards we are using, in an immediately visible way—for example, self-identified atheists can be colored lavender, non-self-identified-atheists who are nonetheless commonly described as atheists can be colored light-blue, etc.
4. We should consider combining this list with the (rather frightfully short) List of agnostics, using the aforementioned table system to clearly distinguish self-identified atheists, self-identified agnostics, and self-identified atheist agnostics like Russell, all while avoiding conflating any of these choices of self-label from the many cases where people have been labeled "atheists" or "agnostics"—sometimes very noteworthily, and not necessarily any less verifiably than in self-identification cases.

(We cannot, after all, see into the hearts and minds of people to actually verify whether they're "atheists" in any sense. No one on this list is necessarily an atheist, regardless of how one defines "atheist". They're just people who have been identified as atheists, by themselves and/or others.) -Silence (talk) 03:28, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Silence, thanks for you comments. The general practice of treating a person's self-label as more reliable than those applied by other sources is premised on some reasonable assumptions, namely that (1) no one knows a person's beliefs better than the person themselves, (2) a person who uses such a label is aware of and has in mind at least one of the common definitions of the word, and is using it accurately, and (3) the person is being honest about their own beliefs. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we are not justifed in supposing that someone is lying about their own beliefs, or that they have such a gross infacility with words that they think "I'm an atheist" means they believe in God. In cases where dishonesty or linguistic incompetence is evident, we certainly must suspend such assumptions with respect to that person, but such cases would be exceptional.

Option C. above is incorrect. Such persons are at List of nontheists.

The specific type of nonbelief a person has is, when available, indicated in each entry or its footnote. In many cases, we have only the label to go with, and the type of specifications you suggest are impossible to make. I'm not sure where you're getting that the term atheist is used monolithically here, or that a false dichotomy between atheists and agnostics is being set up. Diversity of meaning is amply documented in the intro, and you will find that many people are on both the list of agnostics and list of atheists.

Your suggested renaming and criteria modification goes against standard practice in lists of people by belief. I am not suggesting that precedent in these lists limits what we can do here, but I do think we should examine the wider consequences of applying such a standard. Your suggestions would entail a dramatic change in the scope of the list: it would include not only people who are no longer atheists (Welcome back Flew, but do we really want Kirk Cameron here?), but even those who have been falsely accused of being atheists (Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Senator Barack Obama, etc.). I really don't see that as being more useful that just a straight list of atheists.

Having said that, I do like the idea of having a very clear way of denoting confirmed self-identifiers, and differentiating by type, where such information is available. I'm not so sure about the table format. I find that they are less informative in some ways, since they usually don't have much text for each entry. I find the bio blurbs here useful--they tell me something about a person I may not have heard of, and may pique my interest enough to take a look at their article. There is also room to include particularly relevant quotes, or to note in what ways the persons are notable as atheists (founded an organization, jailed for blasphemy, established an atheist state, etc.).

I think separate lists for agnostics and atheists are natural and useful companions to the main articles on agnosticism and atheism, and that merging the lists reduces that usefulness. However, I can see the value of a single list of atheists, agnostics, etc. in addition to the separate lists. David suggested something very much like this earlier, and I opposed it then. I find myself now more favorably disposed toward the idea. What does everyone think about creating a combined list in addition to the separate lists? List of nontheists seems to me the natural namespace for such a list. The possibilities of the table format suggested by Silence, and the distinctions-notation suggested by both Silence and David seem promising. Perhaps the separate list of atheists could then be limited to those who are notable 'for being atheists (rather than including those who just happen to be atheists), reducing redundancy. Nick Graves (talk) 14:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I think all-round good ideas are expressed here. I find it hard to decide and say something useful. :) I like the idea of classifying how someone is identified as atheist, maybe color-coding. And yes, this could be list of atheists, whose atheism is somehow (for better or for worse) a notable aspect of their life. This would include Bertrand Russell and Joseph Stalin; but not people like Linus Torwald who just said some comments about atheism in some interview. Merzul (talk) 23:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

What to make of John McTaggart?

This guy: J. M. E. McTaggart.

From the ODNB:

"The second group of McTaggart's writings contains only one book—Some Dogmas of Religion, published in 1906. This is the only popular philosophical work which he wrote. He was at once an atheist and a convinced believer in human immortality. He held, on philosophical grounds which he developed in his Hegelian Cosmology and his Nature of Existence (1921 and 1927), that the absolute is a perfect society of spirits, each of whom loves one or more of the others. He also held that each of these spirits is eternal, and that each human mind, as it really is, is one of these spirits. He thought it most probable that the eternal and timeless existence of these spirits would appear, under the partly delusive form of time, as a series of successive lives of finite duration. In Some Dogmas of Religion he takes the doctrine of pre-existence, rebirth, and post-existence as a hypothesis, and defends it with great ingenuity against the more obvious objections. In this book he also discusses free will and determinism, arriving at a completely deterministic conclusion, and the omnipotence of God. On the latter subject he concludes that the existence of a non-omnipotent and non-creative God is the utmost that can be granted to be philosophically possible. In The Nature of Existence his conclusions are even more definitely atheistic."

Sounds like a right weirdo... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oolon Colluphid (talk • contribs) 08:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

"...his conclusions are even more definitely atheistic." Sounds like a pretty clear identification to me. Nick Graves (talk) 15:03, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, that's a reliable source is describing him as atheist. His position doesn't sound that weird to me. It seems like a very reasonable position to hold at a time when physicalist explanation of human consciousness were not readily available. Merzul (talk) 20:35, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Christopher Marlowe; Robert Owen; Arthur Koestler

Could I get a second opinion on Marlowe please? In my trawl through the ODNB, I've generally been discounting the countless pre-1850-ish references to atheism, as it seems to have been a general insult, meaning little more that 'one who disagrees with some prevailing doctrine', rather than what we mean by it nowadays.

However, reading through the Marlowe entry, it really looks like he might have actually been an atheist despite being called one. What do you chaps think?

I think the case for Marlowe's being a "true" atheist is pretty weak: as you note, in those days, the epithet seems to have been used more in reference to religious heresy (such as Catholicism) or outright mockery of God (Satanism, vulgar blasphemy), rather than assertions of total non-existence of a deity. The WP section on Marlowe's atheism, citing further sources, also gives the impression that nothing much can really be said with confidence about Marlowe's views on the existence of a god or gods. Hqb (talk) 14:14, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Adding: And how about Robert Owen? He seems to have been a life-long atheist, but also into spiritualism -- does that discount him? I don't see why it should -- this is a list of atheists, not of non-irrationalists -- but thought I'd check what you all think. Example ref: "Owen was encouraged to read and debate ideas and this freedom led him to become an atheist at an early age. ... In 1824 Owen was pushed out of New Lanark by his partners largely as a result of his atheism. ... Owen continued to preach and teach socialism and atheism, the latter being a forerunner to the Secularist movement although Owen became a spiritualist around 1853."

Oolon (talk) 13:21, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

And, in the same vein, how about Arthur Koestler? I've found a Times item reporting his suicide: "He has a long-held interest in the paranormal and, although an atheist, left a suicide note expressing "timid hopes for a depersonalized after-life beyond due confines of space, time, and matter, and beyond the limits of our comprehension." (David Nicholson-Lord, 'Koestler bequest to study paranormal', The Times, 21 June 1983; pg. 1; Issue 61564; col B.) But one has to wonder about someone claiming to be an atheist while holding the beliefs he seems to have (see his article). Rather like the inverse of Darrow claiming to be an agnostic, really... ;-)

Oolon (talk) 15:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Dalai Lama?

Plus practically any famous Buddhist from the sects that are atheistic in nature. Is it worth placing in this list or would that be self evident. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.150.203.74 (talk) 10:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

They're atheists, sure. But I suspect they'll run into the same problems as all the Marxists, Humanists etc. I don't think we can include them by default, but they should be okay as a starting point for more people to investigate, and if we can find a good atheisticky reference for them then they're good.

Oolon (talk) 11:13, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Non-English Wikipedia entries - ideas?

As you'll have seen, I've dug up a few atheists who have substantial pages in other WPs. That seems to justify including them. However, all they've got here are redlinks, which is not much help for people wanting to see more about them. What to do? Should we leave them red, take out the link and just have the name, 'external' link to the other WP (despipte few being able to read the result), or...?

Oolon (talk) 11:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Solution: Create articles for them. The sources you cite can also serve as at least preliminary substantiation of their notability by WP standards. I will do what I can to find additional sources and flesh out the articles. I do not think a link to non-English language articles would be consistent with the WP Manual of Style. Nick Graves (talk) 23:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I too commend you on your work here. We certainly don't external link to other wikis. If the person is really notable, you could keep the redlink. This will force someone to maybe create the article. It has the risk of people adding less notable people here, seeing that such redlinks are here, but given the high standard that you have set, I would prefer if you redlinked those articles that we are missing, so we get to work creating them. How does that sound to you? Merzul (talk) 23:47, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Splitting

Oolon's asked how we should split the list. I propose simply splitting off the large sections (philosophy, for example) to their own sublists and linking them from here. The small sections (such as sports) can stay for now. Note that with the list split, the chances of having a multi-talented atheist listed in more than one section increases. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. If one could reasonably expect to find someone listed under more than one profession, then why not so list them? Nick Graves (talk) 23:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

You mean sub-articles like List of atheist scientists and List of atheist philosophers, and then just keeping a few most notable ones here as a summary? Merzul (talk) 00:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of keeping the most notable ones here as a summary, but that seems a good idea to me. Nick Graves (talk) 00:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Featured list

With the recent Oolon-fueled surge in entries, it seems an appropriate time to consider getting this list up to featured quality. Doing so will involve at least two things (besides splitting for length): improving and standardizing ref format, and settling the inclusion criteria issue again. The former issue was brought up in the last peer review, but was not adequately addressed at the time, likely because of the tedious nature of such work. Enlisting help from the Atheism Wikiproject just might make lighter work of the task. The latter issue had been resolved and relatively stable for a while, but the current group of regular editors seems largely dissatisfied with the status quo. I had hoped the RfC would inject some fresh outside perspectives and maybe resolve the issue, but participation in that RfC has been low. Perhaps a new peer review will establish a wider consensus.

I must say that, despite disagreements expressed here on the inclusion criteria issue, the list is of exceptional quality when compared to most other lists of people by belief. Nick Graves (talk) 00:25, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Modesty aside, I agree about the quality of the information here. There's loads of stuff that perhaps belongs in the main biographies too, or would if its... esoteric... interest might not unbalance the bio's of those with shorter pages. I'd been worrying that I was including a little too much from the quoted sources, but I feel the context of comments is very important, especially if we try to go the route of letting people see the breed of atheist each entrant is. My concern was mostly to do with the page's size, but I like the idea of separate lists, linked from here, to the big groups, which solves that.

And (apart from the fun / academic interest in numbers, the keeping track of which would become awkward) I don't see a problem with listing people under multiple headings if that's what they're known for. Jonathan Miller is the most obvious one, but Dawkins is both scientist and author (and Known For Being An Atheist). If someone's a sportsman and an MP, then they really ought to go under both sports and politics.

And the authors are a right mess, with journalists next to playwrights, novelists next to people like Sam Harris, and a high profile barrister who was also a writer. How about subheadings, 'writers in general', then break it up for those primarily known as, eg, journalists...?

I do wonder about a 'miscellaneous' one: I realise the dangers, but what else to do with detective Pinkerton (who doesn't sit well under 'Politics and Law'), or the highly decorated RAF chap I found yesterday but didn't have time to include (watch this space)?

I'm not too conversant with the protocols for layouts etc. Anyone mind if I just keep adding people, and let those who are work that stuff out? Or show me a bit that's exactly right, and I'll tweak others as I see them, then do a thorough trawl.

As for the inclusion criteria... as you know Nick, I favour the 'weak atheist' version as per the Venn diagram on the WP atheism page: it is my (perhaps English) simple (and dictionary-supported) understanding of the term. But more importantly, it is simply because: we already have dozens of entries -- well-authenticated and/or self-identified -- of people who Edwords and the other 'hardliners' would deny were atheists. That is the core of our problem, that we cannot tell what version of 'atheist' people are using of themselves or others. So we've got plenty of 'mere nontheists' in here already.

So, I'd propose including everybody and anybody who fits the broad meaning -- and use the evidence for inclusion to let people decide for themselves. Say at the start that, because of this heterogeneous definition, it's a heterogeneous list... and here's the reason this person is listed. That way, an outspoken humanist does not have to mention the A word (see the Flynn article), but those who deny (rather than disapprove of) the A word are out (unless the evidence shows they are lying ('deceiving others only after having taken great pains to deceive themselves').

I'm not sure how to identify the countless preferences and subgroups though. Maybe a table is the way forward, just for layout's sake. Perhaps colour code for the professions. So we might have something like (he sez, about to attempt his first table):

Name	Nationality	Profession(s)	Denomination / (self-) identified as	Details / ref
Richard Dawkins (1941-)	English	Scientist: ethologist, evolutionary theorist; Writer: popular science books	Atheist	Wrote The God Delusion; "If the argument of this chapter ['Why there almost certainly is no God'] is accepted, the factual premise of religion - the God Hypothesis - is untenable. God almost certainly does not exist."
Amanda Donohoe (1962–)	English	Actress: film, stage and television	Atheist	Speaking about her role in the film The Lair of the White Worm, Donohoe said: "I'm an atheist, so it was actually a joy. Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can't embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages. And that persecution still goes on today all over the world."
A C Grayling	English	Philosopher, Writer: books on philosophy	Atheist	Wrote Against All Gods
Clarence Darrow	American	Lawyer	Agnostic	"I do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother Goose."
Richard E Grant	English	Actor: film, television	-	"I'm not a believer myself..."
Matt Ridley	English	Scientist: zoology; Writer: journalism, books on biology of sex, genetics	Humanist	Supporter of The British Humanist Association; counts Richard Dawkins as a major influence

Would something like that work? The only obvious thing is it's leaning towards one long list again... oops! And it'd take a shedload of work to transfer all the info over. Thoughts?

Oolon (talk) 09:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

My proposal (see my previous edit) is fairly similar to yours, except I'd argue for condensing all the current nontheist (atheist, agnostic, humanist, etc) lists into one all-encompassing list of nontheists, which would be reached by redirection from List of atheists, List of agnostics, etc.

I think if color is used for anything, it should be to code the person's nontheistic stance/self-identification (strong/weak atheism, agnosticism, whatever). Career details should be reflected in membership of sublists, much like it is at the moment, though perhaps with some sub-sub-division to reflect the distinctions you've mentioned here. Ilkali (talk) 10:24, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it all should be combined - the atheist/agnostic/non-theist distinction is problematic and largely immaterial. Can use sortable columns and make things collapsible. Can built most of the table by writing some software that takes the text of the relevant pages and uses it to populate the tables. --David from Downunder (talk) 12:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Creating a combined list to replace the separate lists is a bad idea. The atheism, agnosticism, humanism, etc. articles, while covering stances that are similar in many ways and overlapping, nevertheless deal with different terms that mean different things and that are used differently and claimed as self-labels by different sets of people. Just as these articles should not be merged into an omnibus article covering all of them, their respective people lists should not be similarly replaced with a combined list. Even if we think the distinctions are immaterial, the fact remains that a great many people do believe the distinctions are significant enough to accept one (or some) labels for their position, and not others. The words are not synonyms: atheism is not the same thilng as agnosticism, which is not the same as humanism, and so on. Agnosticism is traditionally used as a category distinct from atheism, and even if defined such that overlap with atheism is possible, is still a different term and concept with different applications. There is also a sense of agnosticism which has nothing directly to do one's belief in deities, but has more to do with one's approach to the truth value of any claim. Humanism is not the same as atheism, though most (or all) humanists are atheists. Humanism is a complete worldview and ethical system, while atheism is neither.

I'm not at all opposed to an omnibus list of unbelievers, but I am very opposed to a combined list that replaces the separate lists. It is traditional, natural and useful to have separate ist lists to go along with the separate ism articles. A list of prominent atheists is a useful and illustrative companion to the atheism article (and the same goes for the agnosticsm, humanism, etc. articles). Lists of this type grew naturally from internal lists in the ism articles, where it was obvious that complete coverage of the subject required identification of certain prominent people who hold these views.

I think a List of secularists or an expanded List of nontheists would accomplish what you (Oolon, David and Ilkali) seem to be after with this list of atheists. The trouble over sorting out distinctions between the terms, their different meanings, different points of view as to their proper application, etc. would be mostly, if not completely eliminated. With an omnibus list in place, this list could be much more focused on those who are notable as atheists, which could enhance its illustrative role as a companion to the Atheism article. This would have the added bonus of making it much easier to make the case for promoting the atheists list to featured status. A significant proportion of Wikipedians are very skeptical of the value of lists of people, and that skepticism seems to increase in proportion to the length of such lists ("indiscriminate collection of information," "unmanageable," "unencyclopedic" are typical criticisms leveled). A focused list of atheists, whose members are widely recognized as advocates of atheism, or at least significant as atheists, would be a much more feasible candidate for featured list promotion.

By the way, this list is currently fifth in length of all English Wikipedia articles. Nick Graves (talk) 02:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Nick's contention that this list will face opposition to FA status on the basis of length. I've always advocated a single list of atheists with fairly stringent and properly-sourced criteria (which I don't propose to go into again here, it's been well-debated above and before!) but given the explosion in additions recently, the idea of a shorter list of the most prominent and recognised atheists with links to specialised lists of philosophers, business people, artists, etc, certainly appeals. Let's not forget that FA status focusses on quality and not simply quantity. That said, we'll then no doubt ignite debate on who is prominent for their atheism and who is simply prominent in general, but I'm up for it if everyone is. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think creating a "list of atheist businesspeople" would be practical, nor useful. I have experienced this problem too with a list of mine. I wanted the list to be categorised by occupation and found out people are not like fruit: it's very hard to categorise them properly, especially if a notable person has more than one notable occupation and you don't know where to put him. Splitting is inevitable, but I think splitting by occupation isn't the way to go. I have a suggestion. (1) Putting all names in one big (sortable) table. This saves room and improves usability. (2) If the list gets too long (as it clearly is) there are two solutions. One: have a look at List of LGBT people, it's a list too extensive for one page, so they made several, mainting a high quality while keeping the list alphabetical. Two: Splitting the list using a less arbitrary and subjective criterium. A possibility that comes to mind is nationality. Problems you might have are people with multiple nationalities (like Christopher Hitchens) and the ethnocentrical character of this anglospherical list, you might end up with something like US A-K; US L-Z; UK; Continental Europe; Rest of World ? My view would be that option two is a bad one and I therefore stick with option one. Interesting discussion. Good night. Baldrick90 (talk) 00:06, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

There is a third option: delete a shitload of people off the list. If you are going to have such a list, it is more useful to keep the list small. For example, in List of judoka, we keep the list under 50 names. It is specifically stated that winning a few world championships is not sufficient criteria to be classified as a "notable" judoka. Likewise, in List of celebrity judoka, what is the point of including someone unless they are either an instantly recognisable name or have made significant achievements in some other area, making their inclusion "interesting"? Many argue that such lists are useless anyway. I argue that the List of judoka is "useful" and the List of celebrity judoka is "interesting" (at least from a trivia point of view.) I'm not sure that these unbeliever lists are either when they have grown so large. David from Downunder (talk) 23:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

If we take that route, we ought to preserve the excised information in some form. Perhaps the best way to do that would be to make sure that the sourced material finds its way to each of the atheists' articles. By the way, this list is now 2nd in the list of English Wikipedia's longest articles, right after Line of succession to the British throne. We need to come to some agreement before moving forward with this. Nick Graves (talk) 01:55, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

(←) I think one option would be to have a huge list of all secularists, agnostics, humanists, atheists, nontheists precisely as the List of LGBT people, and just ordered alphabetically. Note that they also have the type L, G, B, T, and a reference, almost like we need. In addition, we could keep here a list of <50 very high profile atheists. Merzul (talk) 07:10, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Deep questions arise... should the list of notable judoka be longer or shorter than the list of notable atheists? What about notable atheist judoka? And LGBTAJ?! David from Downunder (talk) 10:26, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I think Merzul has a good point. It's absurd to have separate lists of nontheists, secularists, humanists, agnostics and atheists. It's very confusing and many people will not be able to tell the difference. I therefore endorse a LGBT-like list, encompassing all religious skeptics (ofcourse adding a column making the distinction). The list of atheists page could be similar to List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people. It might be an idea to include a list of prominent thinkers and activists: Dawkins, Hitchens, Hirsi Ali, Asimov and Rushdie or something like that. Baldrick90 (talk) 17:27, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

New Einstein letters reveal his atheism

Seems this issue has been resolved, Einstein's up, good discussion everyone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.157.134.123 (talk) 20:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

A letter written by Albert Einstein to a friend that has been kept in a privet collection for fifty years has just gone to auction.

The letter contains this line: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

My source for this is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion

I am aware there has been much discussion in here about einstein, which is why I have placed the article here first, to see what everyone thinks. - Anon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.68.141 (talk) 14:29, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Bollocks. Double bollocks. No.550 revealed. If me Dad hadn't had a fall today, we'd be there by now. Yeah, it's as good as some other uncontested statements. A done deal, but for some other comments of his being more equivocal... to the non-Dawkinsians here, anyway. Einstein was a friggin atheist (by anyone's standard), as Dawkins would have predicted, and as the new letter shows.

Oolon (talk) 21:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I beg your pardon? i'm not entirely sure what you mean by "No. 550 revealed" or "We'd be there by now". As to you stating this is bollocks, I'm afraid I'm going to have to stand by the source, the Times Online is an excellent news site, I doubt they made it up.

Edit: me again, I would like to present furthere evidence that the letter isn't a hoax. It's a comment on the story by BBC radio scotland, with some comments by Richard Dawkins (the media seem to want his opinion on everything atheist.) http://media.richarddawkins.net/audio/2008/BBC%20Radio%20Scotland%20Einstein.mp3 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.68.141 (talk) 23:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

You misunderstand. Oolon does not challenge your source. He had been "saving up" Einstein as a surprise, to be added as the 550th person listed.

I do not see this new quote as revelatory. It is consistent with his earlier statements about the biblical god, and with his identity as an agnostic, in preference to the label atheist, which he associated with a "crusading spirit" that he did not share. Pay attention to this note at the end of the article, which supports this evaluation: "Despite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, Brooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism." This new letter does not indicate any change of mind for Einstein, but confirms what we already knew about his beliefs: he rejects the biblical god as a childish invention. Nick Graves (talk) 02:09, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see, my fault entirely. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.149.78.17 (talk) 07:33, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I have very mixed feelings on this, while I agree this doesn't really change Einstein's view on religion. I think it does expose serious problems with this list of atheist, agnostic, etc... I know we can't conflate anti-religious views with atheist views, but seriously:

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

The first sentence here is not an agnostic view, and something is terribly wrong, if we have to label the above sentiments as agnostic. Merzul (talk) 07:48, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Hiya. Erm, sorry for the confusion. Nick has it right. I'm afraid I was a bit, uh, tiddly last night (a well-earned bottle of wine, after spending the afternoon mopping two towels-full of blood up off me Dad's kitchen floor, just a scalp wound fortunately, but he is 81...), so sorry I didn't make it clear. Yeah, I was saving Einstein up.

On the main point: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses" is entirely an atheistic view. Or if it is not, then several other inclusions are also in doubt, such as Arthur Miller's 'God is man projecting himself into the heavens', Medawar's 'God is the product of the mind', and so on... and nobody's contested those.

I'll note that my researches -- trawling through newspapers -- have been fascinating in terms of the history of the usage of 'atheist'. Before about 1850, though there were doubtless 'real' atheists, the term was pretty much just an insult, meaning no more than 'someone who believes differently from the current orthodoxy'. Then we get Bradlaugh, suffragettes, Marxists... the link with communism... it's only in the last thirty years that people other than socialists etc have been readily calling themselves atheists. And only in the last ten or so that ordinary people -- journalists etc -- have been casually mentioning their atheism, rather than it being attributed to others. Point being, as Dawkins might put it, the Zeitgeist has drifted along towards more openness on the issue.

What all that means is that apparently atheistic comments must be understood against the background of their times. It is plain that Clarence Darrow, for example, held atheistic views -- sorry Nick, but I see next-to-no difference between his Mother Goose comparison and Angela Carter's 'mother goddesses are no less silly than father gods'. Yet, in his day, 'agnostic' was the more socially acceptable (or less unacceptable) term. Similarly, Einstein was bound to have mainly been referring to the Biblical God. Couple that with the -- again, more acceptable -- 'cultural Jewishness', God-is-nature-ism, and so forth, and we get... well, just the sort of comments from Einstein that a 'real' atheist would say in the 1930s-50s. I've found precious few news reports from that period that mention the A word except in the communist context.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions." That may superficially be an attack on religion... but note that it's calling the religion the incarnation of superstitions. The beliefs involved are superstitions. And the most fundamental belief of religions is...? That god(s) exist, surely? For Einstein, God is a superstition. Like Miller's projection, Medawar's mind-product, Carter's 'silly notion', and, erm, Darrow's Mother Goose. What can it (or these others) mean, but that the guy didn't think God existed?

I think we've got Einstein nailed, and agree with Merzul that "the word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses" is not an agnostic view, and there is indeed "something is terribly wrong, if we have to label the above sentiments as agnostic". The other thing to remember is that scientists, especially, are generally well aware of Popperian refutability and the technical necessity for agnosticism on the God issue. Even Dawkins is an agnostic, remember. Thus, we see no end of comments about atheism being presumptuous... from people who are, nevertheless, de facto atheists, who do not think gods exist even if they can't actually disprove them. Try to find a scientist who does not hedge his bets (however slightly), precisely because he's a good scientist. But such comments don't make someone agnostic except in the most rarified philosophical terms.

Oolon (talk) 09:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Certainly, "the word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses" does not on its own indicate an agnostic view, but I do not think it is inconsistent with one, nor is it definitively an atheist view. From the context of the letter (see this abridged translation), it is clear that Einstein was speaking of Jewish monotheism and its biblical basis. His rejection of these in this letter is nothing that was not already known from his previously available words on the matter. One may reject the Jewish conception of god, and any other conception of god, while still acknowledging the possibility of a god as yet unconceived. Given the context of the letter, and the context of Einstein's other complex and nuanced words about God, I don't think we're justified in interpreting this as a definitive expression of atheism.

I am not the only one who does not see this newly available quote as an unambiguous expression of atheism: note the evaluation by John Brooke, "who said the letter lends weight to the notion that 'Einstein was not a conventional theist' — although he was not an atheist, either", as reported here. Elsewhere in the article, it is acknowledged that Einstein "expressed complex and arguably contradictory views on faith, perceiving a universe suffused with spirituality while rejecting organized religion." Given the complex (and possibly self-contradictory) nature of Einstein's views, whom will we trust: evaluations of the primary sources made by Wikipedia editors, or those made by reliable secondary sources? I would put much more stock in the latter. Nick Graves (talk) 03:18, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

More discussion on the subject can be found on the Einstein discussion page. Nick Graves (talk) 03:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

My point was not that we should label him as atheist, but it is disturbing that we have no finer distinction than putting him in with real agnostics, like Anthony Kenny. A combined list would deal with this issue, allowing us to say "ambiguous" or "debated" and give a reference to the most balanced commentary on the person's religiosity. Merzul (talk) 06:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem, of course, is that many if not most 'nontheists' (to use the term merely for general inclusivity) are just as 'spiritual' as the supernatural-believers. Dawkins can wax lyrical about starlight, Sagan was the master of such talk, there's Ursula Goodenough... and Einstein. What we've got with these people's sorts of comments are expressions of awe and marvel at the universe, and, often, strong cultural identity with faiths; what unites them is their rejection of supernatural explanations. They are all Naturalists (in direct contrast to the super- variety. And the one pretty certain thing about gods is that they are supernatural.

And that means that any subdivisioning of these non-supernaturalists is intrinsically problematic, subject to the people's own way of looking at a world without supernatural entities, to their own preferred terms for it, to their own understanding of those terms, and, worse (for us), to other people's views of their views, preferred terms and interpretations of those terms. As long as we try to segregate these folks by nuances within the same basic (dis-)belief, such lists will always be a mess. I believe, and assume, that WP readers ought to just have the evidence presented.

And incidentally, since it's been mentioned: I think a list such as this is extremely useful. For a lot of these people, their 'atheism' is of only moderate importance to the overall picture of them. It'd be like trying to divvy up English people into those who love cricket, merely like it, prefer football, love football, quite like both, love both, are indifferent to both, hate both. People may well want to know -- to see a list -- of well-known fans of cricket. But that information may be so insignificant in terms of someone's main biography that it doesn't really belong in said biography. It does, however, belong in the substantiation of their inclusion in an appropriate list. And, as sites like CelebAtheists shows, people do find such lists interesting and useful. I don't see why WP should not have the best, most comprehensive and best-referenced of such lists. Indeed, I think we already do have.

Or something.

Oolon (talk) 08:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

As an atheist myself, I don't entirely agree with comments such as "Even Dawkins is agnostic" Most atheists agree that evidence could arise in the future to suggest an existance of God, but since it hasn't, what's the point of believing?

I think there'll always be some complaints about Einstein being on this list, some of the things he said didn't exactly paint a clear picture. However: 1) Comments such as "I don't believe in a personal God" Really went down badly with the public at the time, Einstein got alot of hate mail, from this point onwards, it's easy to see that he could have worded things a bit differently. Combine this with "It is a lie what has been said about my religious convictions....." and suddenly I'm not so sure how many of Einsteins religious quotes were said by him. 2) This letter was written towards the end of his life, in privet to a friend. It's not surprising he's more frank if he thinks no-one will find out, also, if he lived large chunks of his life as an agnostic, it's safe to say he was atheist by the time of the letter, and would have died atheist. - Anon

So, are we going to put him up?

Anon said, anonymously: "As an atheist myself, I don't entirely agree with comments such as "Even Dawkins is agnostic" ". Hmmm. As an atheist myself, I wonder if you've read TGD? Temporary Agnosticism in Principle is always the scientist's (technical, philosophically defensible) position:

"6 Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'

7 Strong atheist. 'I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one.' I'd be surprised to meet many people in category 7, but I include it for symmetry with category 1, which is well populated. It is in the nature of faith that one is capable, like Jung, of holding a belief without adequate reason to do so [...]. Atheists do not have faith; and reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist. Hence category 7 is in practice rather emptier than its opposite number, category 1, which has many devoted inhabitants. I count myself in category 6, but leaning towards 7 - I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden." (p.50-51, my emphasis).

Or in other words, "most atheists agree that evidence could arise in the future to suggest an existance of God" is an agnostic position.

Me, I'm about 6.9 on the scale ;-)

Other than that -- and my curiosity about which privet Einstein wrote it in (I have visions of him hiding from theists at the bottom of his garden, perhaps, like a good scientist, checking for fairies while he was there) -- I agree entirely. Like Sagan, Einstein was 'as near as dammit'.

Oolon (talk) 08:52, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I have read it actually, and I'm sure it's just wordplay to illistrate the point, after all he calls himself atheist one hell of alot both inside and outside of the book

"Most atheists agree that evidence could arise in the future to suggest an existance of God," (weee quoting myself)

By dawkins standards, and most atheists standards you can be less than seven and still be atheist, not agnostic, saying "I would believe in God if there was evidence but there isn't any" isn't agnotic, after all I would believe in fairies myself if there was evidence, but there isn't, so I don't at all.

But anyway, we've probably deviated from this one too much, after all this discussion is supposed to be about Einstein. Has anyone got any strong feelings either way about putting him on the list? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.157.134.123 (talk) 10:00, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Einstein was clearly an atheist long before this letter. His interview in American Atheist magazine alone confirms that. He discussed his preference for the term 'agnostic', but that was about perceptions associated with the terms. 'Agnostic', after all, was only coined to make the distinction from other atheists in the first place. Point of fact, every time his name goes up, it will be taken down. There are too many people who seem threatened by the fact of his atheism, despite that he himself would be the first to tell you to question anything he put forward.

This speaks to a table format being better as these points could be addressed as needed, eliminating the endless "yes he was"/"no he wasn't" edits and deletions. Skyhawk0 (talk) 17:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Carl Sagan?

Yeah, I know what you'll say. Deist, maybe, no friend of Biblical religion... but nontheist, right?

Well, I've just found the Guardian news report of his death, which includes:

A sworn enemy of "pseudoscientists" - believers in UFOs and paranormal phenomena - he was a confirmed atheist. "I would lose my integrity if I accepted a belief system that did not stand up to sceptical scrutiny," he said recently. (The Guardian (London) December 21, 1996

SAGAN, MAN WHO BROUGHT COSMOS TO EARTH, DIES - Ian Katz In New York, Pg. 3

Firstly, I've not seen that quote before. It certainly hammers home the nontheism (or 'atheism', to those of us on this side of the Pond ;-) ). But the piece also (re-)emphasises our perennial problem. A decent source identifying an 'atheist', with a decent quote that certainly implies it.

So...?

Oolon (talk) 16:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Sagan is currently in the List of agnostics, based on a reliable source that calls him an agnostic. This other source calling him an atheist seems equally reliable. Barring some definitive self-identification one way or the other, or evidence that reliable sources generally regard him as one or the other, I see no reason not to include him in both lists for now. Nick Graves (talk) 02:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Starting a combined List of nontheists (was WhoGosh or HogWash?)

(split off from the previous section due to drift away from Carl Sagan)...

Sure... and once again, this, along with Einstein, shows the need for a single list, with the source(s) available to let people decide for themselves just how 'nontheistic', and in what way, someone is. Dawkins has a sentence in TGD (p.33) which positively begs for paraphrasing here: Splitting Nontheism by splitting hairs - such has ever been the way of categorizers.

Oolon (talk) 08:05, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, let's make one! What will it be called? Either List of secularists or List of nontheists would be ok, I think. What does everyone else think? Nick Graves (talk) 02:55, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I already expressed my opinion on this. List of nontheists would be my preference. Ilkali (talk) 06:37, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

What do I think? Two things. One is, 'nontheists' (effectively, non-supernaturalists) seems more appropriate than secularists, because it relates to the 'god' aspect, the non-natural, which is the core of the issue.

But mainly, my concern is for size. While the principle is fine, we've already got over 600 people on this one, and that's with some pretty strict criteria. 'Just you wait' (he chuckled evilly :-D ) till I get stuck into finding 'mere' disbelievers! It brings in just about every humanist!

I'm not sure of the best way around that. Doubtless some splits, with links from the 'home' page. But how to split? I'd guess, just alphabetically... which also gets around the people who are multi-disciplinary. Easy enough to do with a c&p into Word, sort, and back...

What's the timescale on this? I was about to pull all the 'principally journalists' out of the authors (that's the trouble with trawling newspapers, they tend to have a lot of journalists in them ;-) )... but if we're about to divide the list differently, I'll not bother.

I also wonder whether this list might not, after all, be better dealt with by categories. I doubted the sense of including the references (or even much mention of the people's supernatural stance) in each's article, but I see that many have a right-hand box with a pic and details (born, died, occupation etc), and it should be possible to have another line, 'Religion: Nontheist', and link to a reference from that, so as not to clutter the article. then just ensure everyone's got the category tag.

But that looks like an awful lot of work. And has the disadvantage, when you bring up the category, of producing just a list of names. I rather like this list because, though you may not have heard of someone, it tells you a little about them -- I've had several 'Who?... Gosh!' experiences from it, which a browsing chap wouldn't get unless he clicked on the name, which you wouldn't do if you'd never heard of the person. The list fits a unique niche, really. But, what do the rest of you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oolon Colluphid (talk • contribs) 08:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, well I'm also all pro-"Who?Gosh!" and anti-"lot-of-work". David from Downunder (talk) 07:05, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I've started a draft for the new List of nontheists here: User:Nick Graves/List of nontheists. It is just a draft. Feel free, Oolon and others, to improve/edit/suggest mercilessly. Once it's in good shape, we can replace the current list of nontheists with it. I'm not so sure about using the exact table format Oolon came up with above, but I've pasted it into the "A" subarticle just as a start. Oh, and David, no one's going to expect you to do any of the heavy lifting :-).

This list of atheists is now the longest article in English Wikipedia Take that, Line of succession to the British throne! Well done, Oolon. Are you going for 666? Nick Graves (talk) 15:57, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Woo-hoo - and they reckon size doesn't matter?! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 16:05, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I like the title, "List of nontheists." Will there also be sub-lists by the nontheists' other occupations? I rather miss that feature of the old "List of atheists." Nihil novi (talk) 02:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Nihil, I agree, but can't think how we can organise the list by occupations without creating even more lists. I considered a sortable table like the one for the list of England footballers, but that's no good as so many people have multiple talents, so it'd only sort by the first occupation listed.

Overall, well done Nick. I'm bothered about making sure we're including everyone in the nontheist lists, and keeping it up to date as new people get added to the various narrower lists. Ideally, I guess those narrow lists should be done away with, since the person's stance will be indicated in the nontheist list. I suppose we do need a sortable list just to pull together the 'denominations'.

If my table design is okay, I'll start on that. It'd help if I could get at the pre- split complete list, will have to look up how to get that!

Oolon (talk) 08:37, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Would it work to sort the nontheists by the occupations for which they are best known (other than being nontheists)? I think that's how they were sorted in the "List of atheists." Thus Bertrand Russell, for example, might be a "philosopher" rather than a "mathematician." Nihil novi (talk) 09:03, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that'd be my guess.

Here's a test:

Name	Born	Died	Nationality	Occupation	Who	(Self-) Identified as	Details
Richard Dawkins	1941		English	Scientist	Ethologist, evolutionary theorist, author of popular science books and articles.	Atheist	Wrote The God Delusion; "If the argument of this chapter ['Why there almost certainly is no God'] is accepted, the factual premise of religion - the God Hypothesis - is untenable. God almost certainly does not exist."
Amanda Donohoe	1962		British	Performing Arts	Actress: film, stage and television	Atheist	Speaking about her role in the film The Lair of the White Worm, Donohoe said: "I'm an atheist, so it was actually a joy. Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can't embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages. And that persecution still goes on today all over the world."
Clarence Darrow	1857	1938	American	Politics and Law	Lawyer, noted for defending John Scopes in the 1925 'Monkey Trial'.	Agnostic	"The story also caught the eye of Colonel McCormick, owner of the Chicago Tribune and a new radio station. Wouldn't it be great if, hey, William Jennings Bryan, the great Orator, and, um, Clarence Darrow, the great atheist advocate, could do battle? Bryan willingly took up the challenge, although he had not practised law for a quarter of a century. Doing so was to destroy his reputation for ever." "I say that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either." "I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose."
Michael Shermer	1954		American	Author	Science writer and editor of Skeptic magazine.	Skeptic	"I am an atheist. There, I said it. Are you happy, all you atheists out there who have remonstrated with me for adopting the agnostic moniker? If "atheist" means someone who does not believe in God, then an atheist is what I am. But I detest all such labels. Call me what you like — humanist, secular humanist, agnostic, nonbeliever, nontheist, freethinker, heretic, or even bright. I prefer skeptic."

References

If that looks okay to you chaps, I'd better get on with loading 666 people into it! (Yes Nick, 666 did spring to mind :-D ... but we'll break that easily: I've got 42 others already saved with details ready to add, and a scribbled list of another 40 or so who look likely (mentioned etc but not definitively) so will need further research (Will Self, Glenda Jackson, Maynard Keynes, Poulenc, etc etc).

My only other question is, what happens about the pictures that so pleasantly enliven(ed)the 'old' list?

Oolon (talk) 11:24, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

There's a lot of white space in there. It'd be nice to have something like this, if possible:

Clarence Darrow	1857-1938	Agnostic	American	Politics and Law
Lawyer, noted for defending John Scopes in the 1925 'Monkey Trial'.	"The story also caught the eye of Colonel McCormick, owner of the Chicago Tribune and a new radio station. Wouldn't it be great if, hey, William Jennings Bryan, the great Orator, and, um, Clarence Darrow, the great atheist advocate, could do battle? Bryan willingly took up the challenge, although he had not practised law for a quarter of a century. Doing so was to destroy his reputation for ever." "I say that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either." "I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose."

or, with a picture:

Richard Dawkins	1941-	Atheist	English	Scientist
	Ethologist, evolutionary theorist, author of popular science books and articles.	Wrote The God Delusion; "If the argument of this chapter ['Why there almost certainly is no God'] is accepted, the factual premise of religion - the God Hypothesis - is untenable. God almost certainly does not exist."

Note that all the items a person might want to sort by are on the top row. Anyone know if there are sortable table templates that permit multi-row entries? Ilkali ([[User talk:|talk]]) 12:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure not. I expect the software is expecting to sort rows individually, and it wouldn't know how to keep them together. Also, looking through the Help:Sorting, I see: "Javascript sorting may not work properly on tables with cells extending over multiple rows and/or columns."

So while I like your layout, if we want to be able to sort, I think we're stuck with something like mine. Then again, the white space presumably costs us nothing in terms of kilobytes, and does make browsing down the list easier -- the main problem with the old bulleted list was that everyone was so snuggled up together. On the other hand, given that the list is split up over several pages, I wonder whether we do need to sort?

Oolon (talk) 13:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Come on, guys! I've now (well, as of this morning) got another 70 atheists to add (including some more Big Names ;-) ), and I don't want to add them in one format only to have to chop them around again, the 600 or so already being more than enough!

Well, though Ilkali's layouts are more aesthetically pleasing, and the picture enhancement issue not resolved, I now think sorting is going to be necessary, because each alphabetical subdivision is still going to be long. So, unless I hear otherwise by, say, Thursday, I'll go ahead with my version above. Oolon (talk) 08:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

It's probably worth mentioning that, once we have the tables in one format, it shouldn't be too difficult to automatically convert to another. Just a little regex action, probably. It's frustrating because, having looked at the javascript, I know it'd be an easy fix to make it allow multi-row sorting. Oh well. I guess the average user's resolution is quite a lot higher than mine, so they won't be seeing as much whitespace.

Quick query, though: Why is Dawkins' nationality given as 'English', while Donohoe's is 'British'? Ilkali (talk) 10:23, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Ref the quick query: It's just an accident on my part, sort of, from knocking up a rough draft... and we ought to standardise the terminology. But, given that we (sensibly) differentiate 'Scottish' and 'Welsh' (these things make some considerable difference for, eg, authors), it seems fair to call those who are English 'English' rather than 'British', and reserve 'British' for those who we aren't sure of and those who are more, well, generically UK. Many 'Britons' have been born 'overseas' -- Dawkins, Matthew Parris, etc, yet they are, well, British. I guess it's a matter of what they are, rather than merely where they were born. Or something. Oolon (talk) 10:47, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

"it seems fair to call those who are English 'English'". I agree completely. Ilkali (talk) 12:37, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Just to note: I said this morning I had 70 more to add. It's now up to 107. I'm torn between formatting what we've got and digging for more. Heh, I could say that, since the digging is my forte, someone else ought to do the tables... ;-) :-D

Oolon (talk) 16:07, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

In response to your list Oolon, a few comments. I would a prefer a more aesthetically pleasing list like Ilkali's, but if we can indeed not make it sortable (which I don't really care for if the list is not too long), we need to sort something out. 1) I dislike the sortable "born" and "died" columns. Why not merge them? This doesn't look good and it's not practical. 2) Using British seems fine to me. Let's say we got us 3 englishmen, 2 scotsman and welshman. If we use "British (English)", "British (Scottish)" and "British (Welsh)", that might be an idea, but it's not such a big issue. 3) I think that when it comes to the "occupation" column, I think we need to standardise: either politics or politician, science or scientist. Right now we're mixing things up. I'd prefer the latter, which is also used in the LGB people list by the way. 4) I really like the "Details" column (we could call it "quote", since that's basically what it is, but I'm fine). For a list of vegetarians, people with polio or scientologists it would in most cases not be useful, but atheists tend to comment on their lack of belief in interesting ways. 5) Are we going to make a distinction between the activists and thinkers and the people who just disbelief? 6) We still face another problem though: the size. I have a high res screen so I don't really mind but this has to suck using a 800x640 resolution. It's just too wide, I think we need to think about that. Perhaps abbreviations like in the LGB list (which uses L,G,B instead of writing it out in full) could solve a little. I know you want to get on with this, and so do I, but this is an important decision and we have to reach consensus right now. Baldrick90 (talk) 23:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

(0) I agree, I much prefer the appearance of Ilkali's versions. But I think it is going to have to be sortable, both as a way to pull together people in different ways (mainly, by occupation or by 'denomination') and, with that in mind, because the lists are still going to be fairly long. In an ideal world it should be a single list, but since it can't be, I don't think we should split into more sublists than we have to.

(1) A single dates column is fine by me.

(2) "British (Scottish)" etc works for me, but is a little cumbersome... and for sorting purposes, leaves the, what we might call, "British (general)" people rather afloat and separate. Do we even want to make it sortable by nationality? I suppose it would be interesting, but does mean being tight on standardising.

(3) Ref 'occupation', yes to standardisation, again for sorting reasons. I'd vote for 'science' rather than 'scientist', because it's really a 'field known for' column rather than 'occupation' as such: many are multi-disciplinary, which makes it a bit odd to identify, say, Sam Harris, as one thing in particular, which is what 'occupation' implies. Say, would "Known for" be okay?

(4) I (slightly) think "Details" is better, because not all the references are quotes (Martin Rowson, for instance, has "Rowson refers to himself as an atheist throughout his 2008 book The Dog Allusion: Gods, Pets and How to be Human").

(5) I gather we are effectively making that distinction via the 'List of atheists', with it (now) being 'atheists whose atheism is important in their work rather than just their theological position'. I'm not sure what point there'd be to identify them within the big lists, other than keeping the 'activism' 'Known for' label. (Aside: is theer any value in differentiating nontheism-activists from other activists? I've come across a number of anti-apartheid, feminist etc activists who also happen to be atheists. Thoughts?)

(6) I don't know much about the technical side of things, so leave that to others. I'm not overly in favour of using code labels; 'L, G, or B' is easy enough, but we've got atheists, agnostics, skeptics, humanists, rationalists and a host of others, so we'd need a key somewhere. As I say, I don't know much technical stuff: are you saying the table appears too wide in some browsers, so you've got to left-right scroll? If so, yuck, not good. However, I can't see how we can lose any columns apart from merging the dates. Unless we really don't need to sort...? But we do, to put the 'Known for' together from the (most sensible default of) alphabetical. Dunno. Anyone else?

Oolon (talk) 08:32, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion: In the "denomination" column, distinguish between self-identifiers, and those who have been identified by others as atheists, etc. If a person is known to have called herself an atheist (and we have the direct quote to back it up), make it bold: Atheist. If a secondary source does the identifying, leave the font regular. Many of the subjects may have more than one label (Kurt Vonnegut comes to mind). Heck, you could even go ahead and label Darrow "Agnostic, Atheist," as I know of at least one reliable source that calls him an atheist (PBS online--I would have to dig it up on Google again, unless someone else finds it). I agree with the column title "Details." That leaves it open to whether we use or a quote, or explain [a] pertinent detail[s] in our own words. Nick Graves (talk) 02:55, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[unindent] I don't see why we can't do the self-identification in bold. Seems a good idea, but we ought to indicate, somewhere, somehow, what the bold (or lack of it) means. Although, it's slightly superfluous, since the 'details' should show whether it's self- or attributed identification. Though I see the sense of it, I'm wary of having more than one label in the denomination column, as I presume it will mess up the sorting, with 'Atheist's falling together, but 'Skeptic, Atheist' coming separately -- it undoes the advantage of sorting. Perhaps 'Preferred to be called an agnostic' in the details, or something?

But, can we get a decision on the table layout asap please? The browser renderabilty thing bothers me, as does what we do with pictures if we don't use an Ilkali-style layout. But just to keep you all updated, my Word doc now has 155 new additions. Who do we fancy for No.750? ;-) David Cronenberg? William Golding? Michel Foucault? Seamus Heaney? Philip Roth? Nah, I got a couple of better ones! :-D

Under what heading do we want to put architects? 'Visual Arts' is pushing it a bit...

Oolon (talk) 08:20, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

It's a tricky problem. I think there may be ways to get sortable multi-row tables, possibly through use of nested tables, but I'd have to do some experimenting to be sure. We should probably decide on something to use in the meantime, but make sure it's in such a format that it can be easily converted later. I'd recommend we build the table from raw XHTML (like that I used above) rather than template code.

I'm not convinced that sorting is actually useful. If the point is to allow the user to, for example, look through all listed nontheists in a particular field, then can't he just use his browser's text search feature for that? If we discard the sorting problem, we can use a multi-row approach, which works much better on smaller screens.

Regarding the problem of adapting our existing data to a table format: Oolon, does this seem like something that can be automated, or does each entry need human attention? Ilkali (talk) 09:04, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Heh. You lost me as soon as you mentioned XHTML, whatever that is. Give me a bit of something that works, and I can adapt it! And yes, as far as I can see, each entry will have to be manipulated, as it's currently in single paragraphs and will need splitting into separate columns. For instance:

• Keith Allen (1953–): British comedian, actor, singer and writer, father of Lilly Allen.(ref>"One of the many reasons Allen made the documentary was to explore his own atheism. Unlike most non-believers, he claims, in all seriousness, to have once seen God. It was at Glastonbury during the 1980s, and (as is the case with most of the splendid anecdotes that litter his conversation), it involved enough mind-altering substances to stun a baby elephant. [...] Like any considered atheist, particularly one who will burn in Hell, he lives according to a moral code that refuses to romanticise things like love, or devotion." Guy Adams, Serious documentary maker? Is Keith Allen having a laugh?, The Independent 21 June 2007 (accessed 25 April 2008).</ref)

Name, dates, nationality, 'who', details, all have to go to separate columns (or row cells if multi-row), and shift the ref tag to after the quote.

Six hundred times.

Which is why I've held off adding any more... :-D

Well, unless you know of a way to automate it, anyway! Otherwise, it's a lot of click-and-dragging.

Oolon (talk) 09:50, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, for our purposes, XHTML is just HTML. One thing you could consider is using a neutral XML format, like this:

<List>
  <Person>
    <Name>Richard Dawkins</Name>
    <Nationality>English</Nationality>
    <BirthYear>1941</BirthYear>
    ...
  </Person>
  <Person>
    <Name>Keith Allen</Name>
    <Nationality>English</Nationality>
    ...
  </Person>
</List>

The benefits are threefold:

• It might be easier to convert into this format, since it's a little cleaner - there are no presentational details (like 'rows' and 'cells') mixed in with the data.
• Once we have all the details in this kind of document, it's easy to transform it into HTML. Which means we don't have to decide on an ultimate format until the very end.
• Because the intermediate XML format is simpler, it's less likely that a mistake will be made somewhere. And the HTML produced at the end will be error-free because it's generated by a cold, predictable computer.

Ilkali (talk) 10:04, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

As for automatically building the tables, I mentioned way back that it can be done with some software. As each entry is structured, it's possible to automatically build the new table(s) and split the current data into NAME, DATE RANGE, and OTHER columns. The categorisation into atheist/agnostic/etc would come from the page from which the data came. Finally it would just need some hand editing to pull COUNTRY and FIELD out of OTHER into its own columns. Apart from populating most of the data properly, it would also build all the XML (or tables or whatever was decided.) David from Downunder (talk) 10:11, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, since you chaps seem to know what you're talking about, I'll leave it to you. I'm happy to do some 'heavy lifting' once it's settled, but will keep digging for now. Oolon (talk) 10:33, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, all we really need is a regular expression. What I have at the moment produces output like the following:

<Person>
  <Name>Clark Adams</Name>
  <BirthYear>1969</BirthYear>
  <DeathYear>2007</DeathYear>
  <Nationality></Nationality>
  <Occupation></Occupation>
  <Details></Details>
  <Picture></Picture>
  <Text>
    Prominent American freethought leader and activist.<ref>"In college, after reading material
    from American Atheists, he became, in his words, 'a pretty hard core atheist.'"
    [http://www.americanhumanist.org/press/ClarkAdams.php Clark Adams: 1969-2007], American Humanist
    Association News Flash, [[May 24]], [[2007]] (Accessed [[14 April]] [[2008]])</ref>
  </Text>
</Person>

What would be needed from there is to manually filter information from the Text element into the Nationality, Occupation and Details elements, and optionally add an image identifier for the Picture element. If this sounds like something everyone can work with, I'll produce stubs like the above for the entire list. Ilkali (talk) 11:44, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot the 'who' field. Well, you get the idea. Ilkali (talk) 13:19, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Outrageously long

Please split This list is far too long and is on the verge of being unrenderable in many browsers. Split in this into List of atheists (A), List of atheists (B), etc. -Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:47, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Dude, we were already working on it! :-) Anyway, I went ahead with a quick and dirty reduction, leaving only those who are/were notable for their atheism, rather than people who just also happen to be atheists. I may have left some in who don't belong, or removed some who do belong. If so, please correct me. Not to worry: None of the information has been lost. I cut and pasted the old huge list into several sublists under List of nontheists. There is much tidying and reconfiguring to be done, but we have a start. I would like to see the nontheist sublists made into tables, much like Oolon's example above. Nick Graves (talk) 23:01, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Putting people 'who happen to be atheists' into a 'nontheists' list.... Does anyone else think this is a dumb idea? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.181.168.245 (talk) 02:52, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

What is the difference between those who are/were notable for their atheism, and those who just also happen to be atheists? It would be crazy to make the list that way. RS1900 11:18, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I have issues with that approach as well. If we're going to make that distinction, it should be on a page like 'List of atheist activists' or somesuch. Ilkali (talk) 12:00, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming that 'those notable for being atheists', being a subset of the 'nontheists', are to be recorded in both places. If not, I fail to see the point of the distinction. I see the 'list of atheists' as being those who have actually argued for atheism or been notable as atheists: Dawkins, Smoker, Harris, Dennett, Bradlaugh etc would appear on both lists, while Ben Elton, Salman Rushdie, Nigella Lawson etc need only be on the 'main' list. The problem of course is the (potentially huge) grey area, with a large proportion of the philosophers being 'arguers for atheism' despite not necessarily being well known. What of Paulos or Martin Rowson, not known as an atheism-promoters until they wrote books on it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oolon Colluphid (talk • contribs) 08:05, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Great work Oolon!

I can't believe that the list was missing Crick, Dalton, Dirac, Feynman, Fromm, Hardy, Higgs, Kinsey, Leaky, Leslie, Maynard Smith, Medawar, Desmond Morris, PZ Myers, Pauling, Paulos, Pavlov, Pinker, Oliver Sacks, Claude Shannon, and Richard Stallman - all great names that stood out for me. I'd like to see them all retained in the final list of really notable atheists... but then it's still going to be a very long list! Even just for physics, having both Eintein and Feynman gives us the two greatest physicists spanning the 20th century. Great work. --David from Downunder (talk) 09:36, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

D'oh! I didn't realise that this was just a restoration of entries previously removed. --David from Downunder (talk) 07:55, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll take the credit anyway :-D

Oolon (talk) 08:13, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Alphabetical order

List of atheists should be split according to alphabetical order. That will solve all the problems. RS1900 11:34, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

List of nontheists deletion

For those that haven't seen, the article List of nontheists is currently up for deletion, which could prove problematic if we're intending to migrate our merged content there. I think it's worth stressing the point that we're currently doing work on the nontheism-related list pages. Ilkali (talk) 20:33, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

What the hell's going on, and where are we at?

Well, the headline above says it all really. I've been away for a few days, and now see we're back where we were, and with some (not very) bright spark proposing the list of nontheists be deleted. Quite frankly, I don't really care how we do it, provided we get a comprehensive list of atheists (sensu lato, so as not to confuse those who are used to, and use, the broad sense) somewhere. As I've said, I've got another 170-ish to add once we've got the format sorted. Can someone provide the Readers Digest version of what's going on please? Or do I have to up-sticks and do this meself somewhere else? All this pissing about is rather irksome. Oolon (talk) 08:11, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I was hoping to get your opinion on the intermediate XML format I described. To recap, I can automatically convert the existing entries into the following format:

(1)

<Person>
  <Name>Clark Adams</Name>
  <BirthYear>1969</BirthYear>
  <DeathYear>2007</DeathYear>
  <Nationality></Nationality>
  <Occupation></Occupation>
  <Who></Who>
  <Details></Details>
  <Picture></Picture>
  <Text>
    Prominent American freethought leader and activist.<ref>"In college, after reading material
    from American Atheists, he became, in his words, 'a pretty hard core atheist.'"
    [http://www.americanhumanist.org/press/ClarkAdams.php Clark Adams: 1969-2007], American Humanist
    Association News Flash, [[May 24]], [[2007]] (Accessed [[14 April]] [[2008]])</ref>
  </Text>
</Person>

The goal then would be to go through each entry in this format and manually move the information from the <Text> elements to the other, more specific elements. So the above would become something like:

(2)

<Person>
  <Name>Clark Adams</Name>
  <BirthYear>1969</BirthYear>
  <DeathYear>2007</DeathYear>
  <Nationality>American</Nationality>
  <Occupation>?</Occupation>
  <Who>Prominent American freethought leader and activist</Who>
  <Details>
    "In college, after reading material from American Atheists, he became, in his words,
    'a pretty hard core atheist.'" [http://www.americanhumanist.org/press/ClarkAdams.php
    Clark Adams: 1969-2007], American Humanist Association News Flash, [[May 24]],
    [[2007]] (Accessed [[14 April]] [[2008]])
  </Details>
</Person>

Then, when everything's in that format, we can use a little XSLT wizardry to automatically convert it into a set of tables, which means we don't need to decide on the structure of those tables until the very end. We could even generate two versions for comparison.

So, does the above XML seem like something you can work with? Ilkali (talk) 08:26, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a good way to do it, but please make the following field name changes:

• Occupation -> Field
• Who -> Description
• Details -> Notes

One concern... would future edits have to be done directly on the generated tables? If so, that can be very difficult / messy / error prone.

- David from Downunder (talk) 08:43, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I just took field names from the sample tables above. The names we choose for the XML have no bearing on what tables are eventually generated, so I'm happy for them to be whatever everyone is comfortable with.

"One concern... would future edits have to be done directly on the generated tables?". It's a tricky problem. I think the ideal would be to maintain this XML behind the scenes, but Wikipedia doesn't really support that kind of thing and editors to the article might not immediately understand it. I should point out that the XSLT wouldn't be restricted to generating pure HTML (eg <table><tr>...</tr>...</table></pre>). If we decided it'd be best, we could as easily generated template-based tables, or purely textual entries like those already in the article. Ilkali (talk) 08:57, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Ilkali, sorry, I didn't realise my input was required: I thought my... "Well, since you chaps seem to know what you're talking about, I'll leave it to you. I'm happy to do some 'heavy lifting' once it's settled, but will keep digging for now." ... covered it -- "it" being my understanding of the code. I can see what it says, and it makes sense, but I know nothing of generating tables (and have more than enough to learn (two Open University courses on the go, ferinstance) without stuff that I can leave to the experts!). I'm a WYSIWYG kinda guy.

In short, it looks like a good idea, provided it's easily editable. If you say it'll work, go for it! Let's have a WYSIWYG bit, and I'll drag-n-drop stuff into it (the aforementioned 'heavy lifting' ;-) )

Added: Given the "tricky problem", might it not be better to go with the WP built-in table? We could say 'sod the sorting', and go with multi-row entries after all? The sorting would be nice, but we didn't have it before, and the table-ified version would look much better...?

Oolon (talk) 09:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

"I can see what it says, and it makes sense, but I know nothing of generating tables". Yeah, I'm more than happy to handle the XML transformation stuff. That was always my intention. Just to be clear: The XML would only be an intermediate format, intended to exist only until we'd agreed on an end format and transformed it into that format. Then it'd be discarded or archived. It just means we can be working on converting the list long before we've reached a definite decision on what to convert it into. With that in mind, I'm not sure what you mean by WYSIWYG - part of the point of this approach is that we haven't decided on a what-you-get yet. What I had in mind was some simple text manipulation, to turn XML like that labelled (1), above, into something like that labelled (2).

I've uploaded a complete XML-fication of the current article (including the extensive content reintroduced by TB1900) here. I'm planning to go through the article later today, grabbing the photo links and inserting them into the appropriate XML elements. Ilkali (talk) 10:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

My preferred breakdown

I hate the idea of splitting the list alphabetically as suggested above. Ignoring any ideas about moving to XML format for the moment, I think that this is the way to go: keep the list basically as it is, but move all the less notable names to sublists organised by field. The lede would need to be templated so we have one version for the top page and all subpages. Also, to avoid having to maintain entries for the most notable people in the head article as well as the subarticles, there is a way to embed content from page in another too. OR... make the top article just a list of links to the subarticles by field, without including any entries in the top article. OR... we could include the list of atheist activists in the top page and other others in the linked subpages. It's easy to move between the above choices if we wan to start moving entries into subpages right away. If we include names at the top level, they should either be highly notable due to success on their field or highly recognisable. No duplication at this level, i.e. include Dawkins under activists but not under science.

Sports

Main article: List of atheists (sports)

• Lance Armstrong (1971–): American cyclist. Winner of the Tour De France 7 consecutive times. Lance Armstrong was quoted by ET Magazine in 2004 as saying "If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts." (Armstrong lost one testicle due to cancer.)

Science and technology

Main article: List of atheists (science and technology)

• Francis Crick (1916–2004): English molecular biologist, physicist, and neuroscientist; noted for being one of the co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.
• Richard Feynman (1918–1988): American theoretical physicist, best known for his work in renormalizing Quantum electrodynamics (QED) and his path integral formulation of quantum mechanics . He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.
• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939): Father of psychoanalysis.
• Desmond Morris (1928–): English zoologist and ethologist, famous for describing human behaviour from a zoological perspective in his books The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo.
• Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936): Nobel Prize winning Russian physiologist, psychologist, and physician, widely known for first describing the phenomenon of classical conditioning.
• Carl Sagan (1934–1996): American astronomer and astrochemist, a highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics, and other natural sciences, and pioneer of exobiology and promoter of the SETI.
• Alan Turing (1912–1954): English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer; often considered to be the father of modern computer science. The Turing Award, often recognized as the "Nobel Prize of computing", is named after him.
• James D. Watson (1928–): 1962-Nobel-laureate co-discover of the structure of DNA.
• Albert Einstein (1879–1955): German-born theoretical physicist, best known for his theory of relativity and recipient of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.

--  David from Downunder (talk) 08:32, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that a categorical breakdown is probably best. I do think there's good reason to use a table layout, though. For one thing, it would make it easy to add information on how each person identifies (eg 'agnostic', 'skeptic', etc), which could be quite valuable. That said, I see the appeal in the simplicity of a textual format. I don't think either would be a bad choice. Ilkali (talk) 09:04, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I love a 'field' breakdown... but strongly object to it as a default (or at least, only available) layout. That's why I wanted a sortable table in the first place. Is Dawkins a scientist, or a writer, or an atheist activist? Jonathan Miller? I'd say that a straightforward alphabetical list as the default is best (easiest to find someone in), but with the ability to rearrange the content. How we do it, I'll leave to you chaps who know more about the functioning of WP. I'm just sitting on piles of new material... and sitting on piles is, as you're doubtless aware, a pain in the bum. Oolon (talk) 09:14, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

It can't be done (using Wikipedia) - to put them all in one table still leaves the page too long (longer in fact due to all the markup). -- David from Downunder (talk) 12:36, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I've split List of atheists. RS1900 11:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I've reviewed. Mojska ^{all you want} 11:26, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed! -- David from Downunder (talk) 12:36, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

It can't be done (using Wikipedia) -- yeah, I realised that... I was thinking simple alphabetical split(s) would be the best compromise.

I wonder what our 'customers' would find most useful? Oolon (talk) 12:46, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, I don't much care for the idea of having a page with just the most notable people on it. Who's to say who's notable? It's too subjective. I mean, my own personal list of notable atheists would include Desmond Morris, Eddie Izzard, Arthur Miller, Andy Serkis and David Gilmour... and I wouldn't bother with Natalie Angier -- who others might consider quite a 'catch'! Nah, we've got to pile in everyone we find, and find a way to make the information useful / browsable / interesting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oolon Colluphid (talk • contribs) 12:59, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

So, I strolled 'away' from this discussion to do a little more digging. Tried to cross-check the names in the English atheists category... spotted George Monbiot, wondered if he is already included... and straight away, we hit the problem of dividing the list by 'field'. Now we're subdivided, what is he? If we were alphabetical, there'd be no problem, but I'll have to check an earlier version of the (complete) list. Just sayin'... --Oolon (talk) 13:09, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

It's a troublesome problem. If we put people in multiple categories then it's inevitable that they'll have different details in different lists. Should we consider a system where we have just a single full entry in the list for whatever field the person is most active in, and put links to that entry in the other lists? Ilkali (talk) 16:06, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, good idea. Under List of atheists (science and technology) we could have

• Richard Dawkins: see List of atheists (atheist activists)

Unfortunately, it won't look so good if we use tables. But with tables we could compromise and fill in a few basic fields. --David from Downunder (talk) 18:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

No list of Christians

So, I'm sure you get this all the time, but how come we have a list of famous people who happen to be atheists, but not a list of famous people who happen to be Christians? Why does Christianity get to be the default position? It just doesn't strike me as very NPOV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.193.34 (talk) 11:08, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Is this not enough for you? Ilkali (talk) 11:16, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Wow, 124.171.193.34 really did his/her research first! Let me think, I wonder what the article name might be for a List of Christians??!! In any case, given the ignorance and prejudice against atheists from some quarters, such a list has some educational value. -- David from Downunder (talk) 12:36, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't discriminate against Christians , so I don't need a list of them . Why isn't there a list of secular humanists , though ? Or maybe just a common list of all non-Protestants ? --Frank.trampe (talk) 03:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

"Why isn't there a list of secular humanists , though ?" What, like this one? <rolls eyes> Oolon (talk) 10:51, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Now now... he wanted a list of secular humanists, not just a list of humanists only 39 out of 40 of those humanists are secular!! --David from Downunder (talk) 12:50, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Erasmus was a humanist but not a secular humanist . In fact , he was almost Protestant since he advocated church reform and lived in Holland . --Frank.Trampe (talk) 22:14, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't discriminate against Christians , so I don't need a list of them . Why isn't there a list of secular humanists , though ? Ummm, so you don't need a list of Christians because you don't discriminate against them, but do you do want a list of humanists because... you do discriminate against them?! --David from Downunder (talk) 12:50, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe just a common list of all non-Protestants ? Ummm, like a list combining all Catholics, Moslems, Buddhists, Atheists, etc together? --David from Downunder (talk) 12:50, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll just keep digging for now, I think...

So, we've got Ilkali, who's busy doing some clever stuff with tables... we've got people discussing whether to keep the list of nontheists or not, and what to do about the content of those pages if they're ditched... and we've got RS1900 creating subpages for the various occupations/fields... and the original page is now back to containing everyone... Let me know when this lot's settled. Meanwhile, I'll just keep researching. :-(

Oolon (talk) 11:45, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I was hoping you'd contribute to restructuring the XML - that's pretty much the 'heavy lifting' you've been talking about. I'm happy to do much of it myself, of course - I just finished putting the image data in there - but it's a big job. I suspect I can largely automate filling the Nationality fields. What about the Field field? I could just have that be filled according to what section of the list they were found in (Science and Technology, etc), or we could try to make some more fine-tuned distinctions (Science: Biology, etc)? Ilkali (talk) 12:19, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Just automate the first version: field comes from the headings. We can discuss fine tuning it later. -- David from Downunder (talk) 12:36, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Ilkali, I suppose I'm wary of it because I'm not sure what it might look like eventually... but you'll now say something like 'whatever we want it to look like', I guess! And I'm wary of putting in a lot of work on it till we're sure that that is the way forward, and how easily editable it'll be afterwards. I was hoping that more people, more familiar with this XML thingy than I, would chime in. We've now got the original list's content split into separate smaller lists by 'occupation', which may be the simplest way to solve the size problem anyway, as per the List of Christians.

I like the table format for ease of browsing, and do feel that it gives us the opportunity to put the person's details, quotes, how they were identified, etc, alongside their entry rather than relegated to a footnote... with the footnotes just for the actual reference so as not to clutter the entry: "Interviewed for Nontheist Nexus e-Zine, Oolon Colluphid said: 'God is Santa for grown-ups.' " [1]

[1] Nontheist Nexus Zine, April 2008 [link]

How would footnotes fit in with this XML table malarkey? And how to mark them up?

I'd just like a consensus on what we're doing and how, before investing a lot of time in one thing or another. If just ploughing ahead were okay, I'd have shoved it all into a table similar to what I knocked up above already... Oolon (talk) 12:41, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

The amount of detail we'd put into the table is exactly the same as we are including in the text now. The footnotes would work exactly as before, which is that footnotes may include some extra explanatory text in addition to the citation if such text was considered not notable enough to include in the main part fo the entry (or table.) -- David from Downunder (talk) 13:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

"Ilkali, I suppose I'm wary of it because I'm not sure what it might look like eventually...". Ah, I see. Well, that seems fair. How about this: I'll put together and upload some XSLT later in the week to demonstrate automatically transforming the XML into one or more formats, as a proof of concept. I'll minimally demonstrate output into HTML versions of the table formats you and I posted above.

As David says, footnotes would work exactly the same, being enclosed in normal <ref> tags. They'll get seamlessly incorporated into the output of the transformation. Ilkali (talk) 15:57, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Ilkali. Can you just post a link to a subpage (under this page) to show the HTML versions? --David from Downunder (talk) 18:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry this is taking so long. Something pretty important has been demanding all my attention. Ilkali (talk) 15:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

No probs. As you'll have seen, I've been steaming ahead adding all the new ones I've found -- only another 50 or so to go! Hope this isn't mucking up whatever you're doing. Oolon (talk) 15:51, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Split

I have split List of atheists into:

• List of atheists (Activists and educators)
• List of atheists (Authors)
• List of atheists (Film, radio, television and theatre)
• List of atheists (Music)
• List of atheists (Philosophy)
• List of atheists (Politics and law)
• List of atheists (Science and technology)
• List of atheists (Miscellaneous) RS1900 12:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

This is not productive at the current stage. Ilkali (talk) 12:21, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. We need to wait for consensus and have a plan. The few issues with my idea need to be first discussed and addressed, not glossed over. -- David from Downunder (talk) 12:36, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Editors should discuss this. The lists should be edited by other editors. List of atheists is very long. The list had to be split into different lists at some stage. List of atheists is the longest list and there are many more atheists missing from the list. RS1900 13:25, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong in simply breaking the page into sections instead of separate pages ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Frank.trampe (talk • contribs) 03:41, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

It already was, and even the sections were getting too long. Oolon (talk) 10:46, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the real reason for the split is just in case there is a believer accidentally included... you know... one bad apple spoils the whole bunch and all that. --David from Downunder (talk) 14:34, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Rejected PPL

What happened to the list? it's red-linked now 82.20.250.69 (talk) 18:23, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Page move has broken several links

Note: Most links referred to below have been fixed; see June 25th comment by dcljr.

The move from List of atheists to Lists of atheists has broken several links on this talk page related to the old title:

• The link to the archived peer review points to Wikipedia:Peer review/Lists of atheists/archive1, although the actual review is still at Wikipedia:Peer review/List of atheists/archive1.
• The link to comments in the Atheism project box is to Talk:Lists of atheists/Comments instead of Talk:List of atheists/Comments (but I guess the latter page never existed, anyway).
• The link to the list of "rejected people" points to Talk:Lists of atheists/Rejected, but it's still at Talk:List of atheists/Rejected.
• Any links to the subpage "/Xml" from this talk page (note: I haven't actually checked for any) will no longer point to Talk:List of atheists/Xml.
• The links to the six discussion archives have been "hardcoded" in the "Archive box" and thus are not broken, but whoever archives this page next will have to keep in mind the changed page title.

I haven't fixed any of these problems myself because I'm not sure if the older pages should be moved to the new, plural versions, or whether the plural versions should be created as redirects to the older, singular versions. Perhaps which remedy is best depends on which broken link you're trying to fix. Someone much more involved in maintaining (and discussing) these lists should decide and make the relevant changes. - dcljr (talk) 06:51, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

While it's not ideal, I'm inclined to sit tight, pending input from Ilkali. Because, if I'm understanding correctly, what he's preparing will leave us with a single, sortable, initially alphabetical list, that just happens to be split over a few pages for size reasons. I suppose we could do redirects from 'list' to lists and then remove them... or something. Heh, I'm a researcher, you guys know about the mechanics! :-D Oolon (talk) 08:11, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

But this (pluralized) title will still exist, to point to the other lists, right? - dcljr (talk) 23:24, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Having received no response in a week, I'm going to assume the answer to my last question is "yes", so I will create redirects (the less severe option) from the "redlinks" back to the original titles — except the "Comments" subpage, which never existed in the first place. If someone wants to undo this later, they can. - dcljr (talk) 20:21, 25 June 2008 (UTC)