Talk:Creationist

Not encyclopedic

It's not in the style of an encyclopedia to describe a topic under the heading of its followers. This page should be abolished and/or integrated and/or redirect to Creationism --Creaktop

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Please explain, I do not understand why "abolished" and why it is not "encyclopedic style" (I ain't no expert on enyclopedias, mind you) -- Piotr Wozniak

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Well, it's very simple. If you want to have an article about a school of thought (here Creationism) it would be stupid to have either two similar definitions and explanations or identical ones under the name of the school of thought and under the followers of this school of thought. In other words you would have two pages for marxism, and marxists; atheism, and atheists; etc. This is dumb because in both you would have a definition and explanation of the school of thought, but it would be duplicate effort with no enhancement of the encyclopedia as a whole. And it would also fragment the encyclopedia somewhat. --Creaktop

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Clear. However, you need to take into account the fact that Wikipedia <> Encyclopedia. In my case, I assumed a very simple contribution strategy: write short rough outlines if I see anything missing. Meticulous effort is a bad investment as others ruin the structure of thought. According to this strategy, I create "creationist" as soon as I do not see it in WP. Perhaps others will merge/redirect/correct, etc. I simply do not belive in time-efficient extensive writing for WP (except when I paste my own texts written for other purposes). Last but not least, duplication does not seem a great detraction from value (esp. in the context of Wikipedia's mix of values, styles, quality and opinion). -- Piotr Wozniak

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It certainly does not detract from the value of the encyclopedia. Your strategy is entirely correct, but the thing is that there was nothing really missing for Creationist. I assume that people can conclude that a Creationist believes in Creationism. And there already was an article for Creationism (was there?). Some of the info that you put on Creationist is definately missing on Creationism, but wouldnt you agree that it is better if you simply added that info to Creationism, rather than creating a new definition. BTW: i dont understand what you mean with: "Wikipedia <> Encyclopedia" --Creaktop

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I agree with Creaktop; this content should be folded into Creationism. Also, as most fundamentalist Christians are evangelical Protestants (and a significant number of them believe the Catholic Church to be evil), the stance of the Vatican would hold no weight for them. -- Stephen Gilbert

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1. I agree with merging entries. My point was that my style is "too fast" to check out for other entries (call it lazy, I call it MyWikipedia-efficient). I just hope someone will pick useful pieces and put a redirect (which I do not know how to do, yet)
2. Change to "Vatican position" may be justified. My knowledge is limited here (consider: In Poland-MyHome, Vatican's position stands as final judgement); hence: no contest -- Piotr Wozniak

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The Vatican position is certainly relevant from an historical point of view (and I realize how very 'presentist' are many of Wikipedia's entries, but I'm an historian, so there you go). The Roman Catholic Church had a long debate about Darwinism and evolution (please note that I separate the 2). The most recent pronouncement is probably significant, American Baptists aside.

I don't deny the relevance of the Vatican position in general, but only in the context in which it was placed:

In 1999, despite the official stand of the Vatican, fundamentalist Christians on the Kansas board of education removed evolution from the state science curriculum.

The Vatican's stance has nothing to do with the stance of fundamentalist Protestant Christians. -- Stephen Gilbert