Talk:Scott Atran

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Atheist

I'm adding Atran to the American Atheists category. Here's my quote:

"I find it fascinating that brilliant scientists and philosophers have no clue how to deal with the basic irrationality of human life and society other than to insist against all reason and evidence that things ought to be rational and evidence based. Makes me embarrassed to be an atheist"

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge180.html Corbmobile (talk)

Flags

Can't see why he might even possibly not meet Notability guidelines - he's famous and influential. For example: he has been written about by many major publications (Newsweek, Guardian, etc etc - here's a link to he list on his U Mich site; http://sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/feature_articles_about_scott_atran ) Can that flag be removed?

Also, don't understand the "primary source" flag - seems to refer to published sources throughout, usually secondary.

Is it ok to remove these flags at this point?Brozhnik (talk) 02:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Removing "notability" flag - seems self-evidently unmeritedBrozhnik (talk) 23:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The "primary sources" flag seems to have been about the form of the Wikipedia citations (links to his website) rather than to the substance (all were published in edited places - they were not self-published, blog posts, etc.). I've fixed the citations so that you can see where things were published. I'm gonna remove the "primary sources" flag, therefore. Let me know if there's some other reason for the flag and if it's still a problemBrozhnik (talk) 00:21, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I took the liberty of removing the "uses primary sources" flag because I could not see that it currently is a problem - this article does not in its present form rely on primary sources. Unless someone can demonstrate that this is currently a problem, I respectfully submit that the flag be left off.Brozhnik (talk)

Biased?

First I must admit that I harbor a bias against the subject of this page, primarily because he wouldn't even be on my radar if he weren't tenaciously opposed to many people that are. However, the average contributor to this page is likely a proponent of his work and therefore susceptible to a favorable bias. My intent here is to identify and eliminate bias on each side. The section that is giving me pause is the passage regarding his previously mentioned opposition:

Atran's debates with "new atheists" Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins and others during the 2006 Beyond Belief symposium on the limits of reason and the role of religion in modern society highlight the differences between "new atheists" who see religion as fundamentally false and politically and socially repressive, or worse, and those like Atran who see unfalsifiable but semantically absurd religious beliefs as historically critical to the formation of large-scale societies and current motivators for both conflict and cooperation.

What I find particularly bothersome is the potential weasel phrase in "those like Atran". On one side we have a group identified as the "new atheists" with three notable examples and on the other we have Atran and a phantom group of purportedly like-minded people (none of whom stood by his side at the cited symposium). I would simply remove the offending words and leave Atran to stand on his own but, as I've indicated, I worry that my own bias is at play. Let's talk. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OGRastamon (talk • contribs) 03:10, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

With none opposed I shall be bold. OGRastamon (talk) 12:42, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]