User talk:WikiNonBoffin

Welcome!

Hello, WikiNonBoffin, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions, especially what you did for Joanna Vanderham. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Hitro talk 19:02, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

November 2014

Hello, I'm Dougweller. Wikipedia is written by people who have a wide diversity of opinions, but we try hard to make sure articles have a neutral point of view. Your recent edit to Tower of Babel seemed less than neutral to me, so I removed it for now. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. I note that you were reverted by another editor at a different article for the same issue. Dougweller (talk) 12:46, 3 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In response to your comments at User talk:Dougweller

Wikipedia is concerned with objective knowledge, not subjective belief. That is, it is concerned with what most people can observe, rather than what one personally believes. This is not to say that subjective beliefs are inherently false. Indeed, objective truths are dependent upon their perception of other people, while subjective truths are true regardless. However, subjective beliefs are not readily agreed upon.

All that is known of the Tower of Babel is a story within the Bible. To call the story an account implies that it is an objective record of human history. While I can certainly agree that the Bible contains the highest spiritual truths, to treat those spiritual truths as objective records (the assumption behind rewriting history to suit narrowly literalist interpretations of the Bible) is to make the spiritual truths of the Bible dependent upon how many people believe it. "Myth" is used in academia not to mean "false story" but "religious narrative," without judgement as to its subjective veracity. This does not mean that they are equivalent to objective history and science, however, and Wikipedia will note when objective knowledge and literalist interpretations of myths clash.

This distinction between objective and subjective truths is beneficial to Christians: it prevents the article God from being given the atheist perspective, it prevents the article Prophet from redirecting to Muhammed, it prevents the article on Jesus from claiming that there was no historical Jesus of Nazareth, and so on. It also works quite well with "do unto others," as sticking to objective knowledge means sticking to knowledge that either party can agree upon.

For more information, you might want to check out this user essay on how Christianity and Wikipedia's neutrality policies interact. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:46, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, WikiNonBoffin. You have new messages at Ian.thomson's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.