Talk:Dying-and-rising deity

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Self published citation[edit]

"Since the 1990s, Smith's scholarly rejection of the category has been widely embraced by Christian apologists wishing to defend the historicity of Jesus, while scholarly defenses of the concept (or its applicability to mystery religion) have been embraced by the new atheism movement wishing to argue the Christ myth theory"

The citation goes to https://www.amazon.com/This-Sun-Zeitgeist-Religion-Comparative/dp/110533967X

The author of this work seems to be a nobody who writes self published Christian apologetics. I'm not going to buy the book to check the source, but it's also unlikely that a Christian apologist would imply that apologists hang their hat on Smith while Christ Myth theorists appeal to "scholarly" works. This sentence seems to be editorializing Smith's work by giving an example of an apologist who cites him, but it's passing itself off as though it were a more comprehensive scholarly review of an article's impact. 65.128.172.37 (talk) 16:36, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed that text. I have no doubt that it's true—just look at the archives of this talk page, and you'll see examples of defenders and opponents of Christianity citing the scholarly works that seem to support their positions. But you're right that it needs a better source. My perennial lament is that scholars rarely address how their works are misused by laymen for polemical arguments, so Wikipedia can rarely outright say that such things happen even though they obviously do. If a better source is found, this text, or something similar, can be restored. A. Parrot (talk) 06:57, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hahahaha omg thank you for pointing this out. I fully support scouring the citations of this article overall for further devious influence, though I have not the time or particular knowledge on this subject to do so. LesbianTiamat (talk) 03:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is the popular culture section necessary?[edit]

There are only two short references mentioned, both fairly niche, they don't really seem to add any value to the article. 195.226.14.2 (talk) 23:01, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. They are both direct examples of the topic of the article, and the topic of the article is a major part of both works.
Both Homestuck and Ace Combat are highly notable, with enormous amounts of culture surrounding them - music (including by professional orchestras), large quantities of fan works, numerous published articles about them, and extensive documentation on Wikipedia.
Just because they are modern stories in modern formats does not make them less important.
"Popular culture" means exactly that, culture that is currently popular. Everything cultural was "popular culture" at one point.
This is a significant article and could use some restructuring to have greater breadth. Something that could be cut down is the section on scholarly criticism, which is way too long and detailed for Wikipedia. LesbianTiamat (talk) 23:56, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]