Talk:God Is Not Great

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Some minor errors[edit]

Some factual errors in the book: 1. The Hindu God Kirshna was the eighth child of Devaki. The birth is not described anywhere as virgin birth. 2. The circle in the middle of the Indian flag represents "dharma chakra" not the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi. 3. The Tamil Tigers assassinated an ex-prime minister of India, Raiv Gandhi, not ex-President of India.

These are minor errors and do not take away anything from the main thesis of the book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.136.50.33 (talk) 16:44, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To try to explain why your editing was deleted, what you wrote may well be correct, but Wikipedia is not supposed to show facts that you say are correct, Wikipedia is supposed to show facts that someone else has said are correct. The "someone else" should preferably be a reputable source. This is necessary to avoid Wikipedia being a battlefield where everyone can post whatever they think is correct.
Your participation at Wikipedia is otherwise welcome, especially if you get yourself a username. Good luck. --RenniePet 22:56, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The three facts I have given are well known. It is well known and reported widely that it was Rajiv Gandhi, the ex-Prime Minister of India who was assassinated by LTTE terrorists. Also, the chakra is dhrama chakra and not Gandhi's wheel is availble in the Wikipedia itself. Also, it is well known. If someone claims there are 55 stars in the US flag right now should I have to give justification to point out there are only 50. Same with the birth legend of Krishna. Your lack of knowledge about these basic and well known facts is not a reason to delete my contribution repeatedly. If you delete my addition once again I will have to report you for vandalism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.182.140.143 (talk) 23:47, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If these mistakes of Hitchens are significant enough to have been written about by notable commentators, then by all means write that up in the article, but if they're just minor errata where he got a few details wrong, then an encyclopaedia is not the place to publish them.
And regarding "well known" statements, please take a look at Wikipedia's verifiability policy: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." --McGeddon 00:05, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is like arguing with a blind man about the beauty of color. I give up. However, let me state, just because you are western-centric and unaware of even the most widely known facts does not mean the facts I have stated are not well known. The "notable commentators" are all western and probably have even less knowledge about these facts than Hitchens. Hitchens is a brilliant polemic, but he has betrayed a lack of knowledge of even some basic facts very well known (for which you keep asking for references -- just Google these facts and you will get tons of references, all verifiable). If it was my opinion that I wanted to share there were a few, such as my opinion that it would have been much better for Hitchens not mentioning Hinduism at all than to mention it and not criticize it for the most egregious blot of untouchability and to add insult to injury mention erroneous facts that can be used by apologists to dismiss his main claim with which I agree. And the title, by saying "God is" in the title Hitchens concedes the existence of a god benevolent or malevolent. But I digress. Have it your way. Keep this out of the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.182.140.143 (talk) 15:59, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"This is like arguing with a blind man about the beauty of color." Yes, I know exactly how you feel. :-)
I think the problem is that you misunderstand the basic idea of Wikipedia. You are very welcome to provide new information, but you need to find some other web site that backs you up, and include references to that web site as part of your contribution. Or provide the links here, and someone else will do the necessary linking/referencing work for you. Thanks. --RenniePet 16:11, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, some other web site may not be specific. You need a source which meets WP:RS.  :) --Yamla 16:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also, if these are well-known facts, you will find it trivial to provide a reasonable citation for them. It's when the facts are not particularly well known that citations can be difficult. --Yamla 16:22, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe Wikipedia isn't the best place for you to make your opinions public. Have you ever written book reviews for Amazon.com? I used to do that a lot, and there you can write what you want, as long as it's not illegal. --RenniePet 16:24, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, you want verifiable references for widely known facts even for elementary school children in India, here you go. I found these in just 10 minutes.

1. Hindu god Krishna was the eighth child of Devaki. The birth was not claimed to be a virgin birth. I cannot prove a negative :-).

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/religion/festkrishna.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna#Birth

http://www.aryabhatt.com/fast_fair_festival/Festivals/Sri%20Krishna%20Jayanti%20or%20Krishnaastami.htm

2. The circle in the middle of the Indian flag represents the Ahoka Dhara Chakra, not the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka_Chakra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_India

http://www.iloveindia.com/national-symbols/national-flag.html

hubpages.com/hub/national_flag_of_india

3. The Tamil terrorist group LTTE assassinated ex-Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi, not ex-President of India.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E5DF1430F93BA15755C0A9609C8B63

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Tigers#Assassinations

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1503/15030170.htm

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2360099,prtpage-1.cms

If I want to express my opinion I will go elsewhere like Amazon. But these are not my opinion. These are well known facts. The story of Krishna is told and retold starting even when an Indian child is still in its mother's womb. Asking for a verifiable reference for this is just silly. Well, you asked for it and I am giving you three. One of them is from Channel 4. Hope this is verifiable enough.

As regards assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, it happened so long ago I am unable to provide contemporaneous newspaper references. However, I have given references from two leading Indian newspapers and one American newspaper with somewhat sullied reputation with its reporting leading up to the Iraq war.

Finally, regarding the dharma chakra in the Indian flag. Before independence the flag of Indian National Congress used to have the spinning wheel in the center. After independence the spinning wheel was replaced by the Ashoka Dharma Chakra. Once again this fact is well known to everyone in India starting from elementary school children. Since you asked for it I have given references that I hope you will find verifiable.

These errors show that not everything written by Hitchens is accurate. I do accept and appreciate his book. My disappointment is that he did not take on Hinduism for untouchability and caste system. I am sure Hitchens' main target was the three so called monotheistic religions. But by giving false facts about Hindu religion Hitchens has inadvertently offered shelter to the fundamentalists.

From a brief search on the web it seems the book contains many other erroneous facts. Therefore, I think it is important for a Wiki user to be alerted about these in this page. So, I ask you reinstate the edits I made.

-- Dileepan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.60.27.98 (talk) 18:51, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You may in fact be correct with all these criticisms. But without presenting a reliable secondary source that makes these points, then it is your own original research, which Wikipedia is not a publisher of. Please also remember that this page is not for general discussion of the topic, only for conversation aimed at making direct improvements to the article. Thank you, VanTucky Talk 19:26, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
VanTucky, you now want "reliable secondary source" -- you are hilarious. What a cabal .... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.60.27.98 (talk) 19:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The greater issue here is whether these errors are important to an encyclopaedia article. Many, many books have factual mistakes in them, but it isn't an encyclopaedia's job to publish errata for them. If there was a significant news story about somebody reacting to one of these mistakes, then it would be of encyclopaedic interest, but as it stands, there's no reason for the mistakes themselves to be catalogued in the article. Wikipedia would not benefit from every single book article listing any factual mistakes the author had made. --McGeddon 19:32, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But those are trivial mistakes. The best thing would be to sum them all up by saying something like "The book contains several factual errors" and provide a reputable source, which would list them, for this statement.--Svetovid 19:42, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Again, you're missing the point. No one is disagreeing with you that he made errors, but you can't publish original research. You need to find a reliable source which states your opinion, otherwise it cannot be mentioned on the page. Please see: WP:No Original Research.
BTW, I think its interesting that he misrepresented eastern religion and culture because he made quite a few errors about biblical texts and Christian historical figures as well. Kraftlos (talk) 06:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This same type of problem occurs with other articles which are about the controversial statements of one particular person. See for example Pickens Plan. The article can discuss some of the reliably-sourced objections to the article's subject, but even when we know the objections contain factual flaws, we cannot correct them unless someone has published the corrections in a reliable source. If you want to make a point on Wikipedia, the trick is to get good at finding Prooftext. For any sort of debate which is new, the published charges and counter-charges haven't cycled enough times to insure that every claim has a reliably-sourced rebuttal. If you get one cycle ahead of the debate which is raging in the media, then you are doing "original research." But note that it is sometimes possible to create your own reliable sources, such as for example by sending information to a notable journalist who might write about it. Almost any author who is controversial will have his work nit-picked for factual errors by critics. See for example Bjørn Lomborg and Ann Coulter, for whom whole Web sites are dedicated to documenting their transgressions. --Teratornis (talk) 19:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

1. "The Hindu God Krishna was the eighth child of Devaki. The birth is not described anywhere as virgin birth." - According to Bhagavata Purana divine Krishna was born without a sexual union, but by divine "mental transmission" from the mind of Vasudeva into the womb of Devaki. This clearly resembles the Christian teaching of the virgin birth of Jesus. 2. "The circle in the middle of the Indian flag represents 'dharma chakra' not the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi." - Yes, this is true. But Hitchens says "This wheel - which still appears as the symbol on the Indian flag - was the emblem of Gandhi's rejection of modernity". This statement, I think, is being misrepresented. Taken out of context. I don't think Hitchens is saying that it represents the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi. I think Hitchens is only referencing it as something that Gandhi also used, nothing more. I don't think Hitchens would make this kind of mistake given how well read he is. 3. "The Tamil Tigers assassinated an ex-prime minister of India, Raiv Gandhi, not ex-President of India." - Raiv Gandhi was indeed ex-Prime Minister at the time of his death but he was also the President of the Indian National Congress. Hitchens in his book doesn't mention Raiv Gandhi by name but is alluding to him when he speaks of the Tamils as having pioneered suicide murder and then says "This barbarous technique, which was also used by them to assassinate an elected president of India... ." I think Hitchens was aware of Raiv Gandhi's position as President of the Indian National Congress. This is probably what he was alluding to. In any case, I'm sure Hitchens would have known that Raiv Gandhi was not the Prime Minister at the time of his assassination. This is, after all, common knowledge.Peter Jensen (talk) 01:10, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Use of "the" in the intro[edit]

Regarding this edit, the lack of an article in this intro reads more like news style-writing than that of an encyclopedia. Despite noting this, my edit has been reverted twice now without explanation (indeed, FreeKnowledgeCreator even retraced my contributions, removing a similarly placed article from a much larger edit I made a few hours ago to Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now). Apart from a slight case of ownership here, was there a reason this edit was reverted? As in, one that should have been included in one of the two edit summaries? Jg2904 (talk) 07:28, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is no point in pursuing this matter if other editors simply do not agree that the inclusion of a definite article in that sentence is an improvement. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 09:03, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Reads much better without "the" and it certainly isn't more encyclopedic to add it as it is a grammar error. "Do not use the with people's names." Lipsquid (talk) 17:54, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You're certainly right, Lipsquid: one shouldn't use the before people's names ("the Christopher Hitchens" indeed sounds ridiculous). But as "author and journalist Christopher Hitchens" is not a name alone, but rather a noun phrase, it is perfectly acceptable and even preferable to use a definitive article before it. The user SMcCandlish has been something of champion on this point, and I tend to agree with him (as with the critic John Simon, who would surely bring some much needed wit to this conversation). A quick thumbing-through of some of my own library seems only to bolster this claim. For example:
  • "The jailbird and tax evader Sun Myung Moon [...] is one of the patrons of the 'intelligent design' racket." — Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great, p. 249
  • "The writer Aldous Huxley brought this idea into prominence by publishing an anthology by that title. [...] Like Huxley, anyone determined to find a happy synthesis among spiritual traditions will notice that the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260–ca. 1327) often sounded very much like a Buddhist..." — Sam Harris, Waking Up, pp. 20–22
  • "The discovery of the antielectron was one of the great triumphs of theoretical physics, for its existence had been predicted just a few years earlier by the British-born physicist Paul A. M. Dirac." — Neil deGrasse Tyson, "Antimatter Matters," Death by Black Hole, p. 103
[italics are all my own]
The relative ease with which I was able to find these passages speaks something to their ubiquity in similarly high-minded literature. Though none of these writers is considered an expert on the English language, they are all known for being especially articulate communicators. And it strikes me as particularly arrogant that my edit would be removed without explanation (both here and now subsequently in other articles to which I've contributed), that my objection would be summarily dismissed by FreeKnowledgeCreator after only two editors disagreed (including himself, and still without proper explanation), and that evidently users on this talk page think they know more about the written English language than the three writers cited above. Normally I wouldn't raise such a fuss over so minor a detail, but I'm swiftly growing tired of thinly-veiled condescension from puppy-guarding editors who feel they don't need to sufficiently explain their reductive edits.
Ergo, I would like an explanation for the article's removal in the intro (preferably citing Manual of Style), if it's not so inconvenient for you. Jg2904 (talk) 19:56, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I understand what you are saying, so much of English grammar is really based on how it sounds, rather than proper grammar rules so finding exceptions in literature doesn't prove much as they both sound acceptable. It is a question of what is grammatically correct. Rather than prove a negative, I assume it would be easier to prove the positive in that there is a grammar rule that says "don't use "the" with people's names unless it is a noun phrase" or "The use of the definitive "the" is always acceptable in front of noun phrases". I certainly didn't mean to be condescending, I would very much suspect that you are more familiar with English grammar than I am. This one just seemed obvious to me because one of the few rules I do remember is don't use "the" with people's names. I am sure you can find an authority for using "the" in a noun phrase, this isn't the first time it has ever been questioned. Lipsquid (talk) 20:35, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not really a "champion" for the in this kind of case, I just agree that it's "headline-ese" in tone. This isn't a grammar matter at all; that word doesn't really mean what you seem to think it means (overuse of "grammatical" as if to mean "having something to do with style of language use" is a common error, but still an error), and there is no rule for or against either construction (nor is there any entity capable of issuing such rules, not for English anyway; we have no equivalent of the Académie française). It is, rather, a matter of sociolinguistic register. The longer usage is semi-formal to formal, the shorter much more casual, and characteristic of marketing and journalism style. If I were beginning a conference presentation that started off mentioning this book, I would write, and say out loud, "In God Is Not Great by the author and journalist Christopher Hitchens ...". I know for a fact I would do this, since I did exactly this, except the reference was "In The Mass Psychology of Fascism by the ironically named but brilliant political scientist – and quack actual scientist – Wilhelm Reich ...", to start off a very tense subject with a laugh to put people more at ease about the rest of the content. If I were a breathless newscaster with only 30 seconds to make my point before being cut off by the weatherman, I would instead say "In God Is Not Great by writer Christopher Hitchens ...". It has a distinctly "newsy" feel; I want use a fake newscaster voice when I say it.

If we were to use an informal compression of this sort, desperate for brevity, then the lead section is probably where to do it. A case could also be made for using it when the person(s) being referred to is/are non-notable ("Among those wounded in the mass-shooting were cashier Betty Garcia, and café patrons Jim McSnorkel and April N'gomo."), but people might oppose even in those cases, as also being too newsy. The thing is, though, this lead is not wanting for space; it is not like the four-paragraph monsters at Barack Obama and Electronic cigarette. So, the need does not appear to arise for any kind of heavy-handed textual compression like dropping this use of the. Such clipped constructions can become very awkward, especially when a proper name appears in them. E.g., let's mangle the Harris prose quoted above: "Anyone will notice Christian mystic Meister Eckhart often sounded very much like a Buddhist". That's almost unparseable without reading twice and would be even worse in a screen reader, since "Christian Mystic" would sound like someone's stage name. It reads like something Hunter S. Thompson would write after two joints and half a bottle of whiskey. I confess I often write this way when taking notes (without chemical influence), but we should take pains to decompress such "verbal ZIP files" when writing in articles here. The same goes for a lot of things, like habitual dropping of that in constructions in which people tend to drop it when talking aloud (as in my previous sentence, where I shortened "I confess that I often write this way ..." – note how much informality and parsing difficulty the deletion introduces); use of who when whom is intended; forgetting to expand acronyms on first usage; referring to the United States as "America"; using "US" (or "U.S.", if you insist) as a noun; forgetting the comma after an introduction like "In 1999" or "After moving to Paris"; etc., etc. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but excessive brevity is not, or that very saying would simply be "Brevity is wit."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:56, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Another example, mangling the Tyson material quited above: "Its existence had been predicted just a few years earlier by British-born physicist ..." is awkward, because the construction, by its nature, leads us to expect a collective noun phrase after "British", as in "... by British researchers at the Royal Society of Omphaloskeptics", a construction that would not take the at all, unless in reference to a set of previously mentioned persons.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:07, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

SMcCandlish If only his name were Wilhelm Reich III.... I obviously read all of your commentary, there would seem to also be a question about whether all the adjectives in the noun phrase were definite. "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a 2007 book by the author and journalist Christopher Hitchens" reads well while "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a 2007 book by the journalist and author Christopher Hitchens" is confusing. Is this a book or a new story? Another example adds an adjective "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a 2007 book by the atheist, author and journalist Christopher Hitchens" reads horribly. I feel there is some rule in here, and I am pretty sure it is in the placement of definitive adjectives. Just my $0.002 and I am by no means a grammar expert. Lipsquid (talk) 21:52, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted the first time because it's unnecessary and just sounded worse to my ear, so being that my reason for reverting was essentially "I disagree with this change" I didn't think further explanation than the default undo summary was needed. The definite article there is grammatically acceptable, sure, I just think it sounds worse with it than without it. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:36, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While I can appreciate your intuition, surely there are better reasons to revert edits than our own subjectivity. Dodecaphony sounds aurally pleasant to some, but I wouldn't recommend piping it over speakers at the mall. Jg2904 (talk) 22:27, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Before starting tranlation....a question[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians! I intend to translate the article into Greek but I am a little worried that there are too many citations to the book itself. Would that be original research? Thanks! Τζερόνυμο (talk) 19:41, 28 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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