Talk:Witness argument

Untitled

This is the archived discussion of a redirected talk page.
Please see:Talk:Argument from religious experience

NPOV, Content, and respectability

There is content here that is included without respect to notability or bias avoidance. As a Mormon, I feel embarrassed to have the theophanies of my heritage advanced before other more well know or equally lesser known theophanies. Is there any way to balance, discipline, and improved this article? If there is no response within a copule of months, I will take it on myself to prune the article without adding a lot of content. Tom - Talk 21:55, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

Need to fix rather than add NPOV dispute. Tom Haws 21:30, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

Serious NPOV Problems with Article

The article as written presents serious NPOV problems. It appears to be claiming the assistance of good is provable fact. It presents opinion as fact. Statements like "Proof that many individuals have actually seen and conversed with God can be found all around the world in public and private records." or "Some have seen Him, and others have heard His voice. Still others have experienced His love, and felt His power" as currently found in the article are in serious violation of the Wikipedia NPOV policy. If the intent was to present arguments of theists then such arguments must be clearly attributed to theists. Also the section on supposed biblical proof of God must be rewritten to clearly established the fact that many people do not agree that the old and new testament prove the existence of god. The should be rewritten to more clearly what the "Witness argument" is and who argues it. -Cab88 21:34, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Right. Please fix. Tha article needs attention. It was obviously written by people who know nothing of our aims and policies. Adding a dispute doesn't help. Dive in and fix it. Tom Haws 21:45, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

How to fix

In general, there are oodles of witness accounts of God. We can hardly fairly select from them all, though it seems we ought to select a few as well as giving an overview. The article should give a an overview of all historic reports, and then focus on current reports (last hundred years, this year, etc.) as being most accessible and verifiable. Either that or simply stay out of the business of telling specific reports and just talk about the argument. Anyone else have ideas? Tom Haws 21:44, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

Since those making such witness accounts could either be intentionally making them up to gain attention/publicity, have mental problems, or have simply hallucinated them due to drugs or alcohol, we need to make it clear that these factors may explain at least some accounts. We should also describe the difficulty in proving that such witnesses did indeed occur (i.e. how does one prove one talked to god?). If we are going to list supposed witness accounts then we should stick to accounts that have some significant following, as in at least a significant number of people believed this person. We also must not take any position as to the truth of any such accounts but we can present arguments from believers in them as to why the believe them to be true. -Cab88 09:52, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good ideas. I think we should tell a little history of who has relied most heavily on the witness argument, how it relates in significance to other arguments. Not of course an easy article to write. Maybe we could start here on the talk page or on a scratch pad trying to come up with an outline. Do any of the other arguments have good articles? Does this need an article? Tom Haws 21:29, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Merge

This seems to overlap with argument from religious experience, only specifying the nature of the experience to witnessing God. Since this article lacks sources, it would make sense to merge it into the other one, which is a bit more mature. Vesal (talk) 19:44, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Very much so. I see absolutlely no distinction between these two arguments whatsoever. They both essentially state, as the basis of their argument, that "God exists because people have seen him". There should only be one article on this. And we haven't seen any objections. I'll merge this soon.122.106.160.244 (talk) 02:49, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll do the merge now. ItsZippy (talk) 18:06, 29 June 2011 (UTC)