Talk:Atheism

Criticism section?

Most philosophies or ideologies ("isms") generally have various criticisms. JDiala (talk) 00:52, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. A whole page in this case: Criticism of atheism. :) --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  01:15, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Long, Uneven History Section

There is another encyclopedia entry (as noted in the article) specifically on the history of atheism, yet the history section here is stunningly lengthy. It is also unbalanced between historical epochs and subtropics, with unnecessarily extensive space given over to the state atheism (which also has it's own article) and religious persecutions of Communist states in the 20th century. While this is useful information, the depth and detail seem inappropriate to this specific entry. Indeed a lot of the ground is covered in other wiki entries. This section also suffers from over-reliance on a single source, Geoffrey Blainey's Short History of Christianity. This is a legitimate source, but brings bias vis-a-vis atheism both because it is a history of a movement that deplores it and the work of an author who is quite critical of it. Blarney should be balanced out with a wider assortment of scholarly voices to ensure more neutral POV. Indeed it is odd that this recent work on Christianity should be such a heavy source when the last few years has seen a plethora of highly-regarded histories of atheism published.TheCormac (talk) 17:06, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said, and I would encourage you to indulge yourself as you see fit. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:24, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Article Quoting Religious views of Famous (Currently Popular) People

Someone might want to look at the quotes in: http://www.rantlifestyle.com/2014/01/01/famous-atheistsagnostics/#slide49 to see if there is anything new. In addition to some Hollywood people, there are some company-founding billionaires. I found these quotes to be as succinct and specific as you could want. I don't know how we view a source such as this per WP standards. Frank Layden (talk) 13:40, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Dewey Not an Athiest

This article boldly asserts at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Since_1900 that John Dewey was an atheist. This is a false assertion, or at least highly contested. See Knight, Philip J., "John Dewey and the Reality of God", http://commons.wvc.edu/cvanderhart/philosophy210/Handouts/John%2520Dewey%2520and%2520the%2520Reality%2520of%2520God.pdf 66.168.9.210 (talk) 21:21, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I tried to look at that link, but it appears to be a faulty link, so that makes it difficult to evaluate whether we should change what this page says. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:28, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Dewey is described as an atheist on his Wikipedia page: John Dewey. Suggest taking the issue up there in the first instance. --Dannyno (talk) 15:50, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

"Deities"

The first sentence seems potentially ambiguous to me; using the plural of the word "deity" could be read as the rejection of polytheism. Perhaps "rejection of belief in the existence of a deity or deities" would be better? Joefromrandb (talk) 02:24, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Like everything in the lead, it is a kludge, and it really has been discussed (a lot!) before. First, we will run into the question of whether we should change it only in that one sentence, or throughout the lead paragraph, and then there will be objections based on wordiness. There have also been very lengthy discussions somewhere in the archives about the philosophical implications of singular-versus-plural. I'm not saying you shouldn't discuss this now if you want to, but please just be aware of all the archived talk, and be aware that you may encounter pushback. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Atheism rejects the concept of "divine" itself, thus it really doesn't matter singular or plural.91.198.17.200 (talk) 09:39, 1 April 2014 (UTC)