You wrote:
Can you back up this accusation with examples? It has been my impression that no one has supressed the desire to document any such point of view, but some do demand that when such a point of view is documented, it must be reported accurately and honestly, which means attributing it, comparing it to the more common viewpoints, and covering them as well. I, for one, think it is critically important that we cover religious beliefs, popular beliefs of other cultures, movements like postmodernism and new age, etc.--and it's important that we accurately report the opposition to them. My impression is that when people say "let the viewpoints be expressed so the reader can make up their mind", what they really mean is "You preach to your choir and I'll preach to mine", and they aren't interested in actually comparing the views face-to-face and accurately reporting them. --LDC
TAW wrote on PV of a Science or Nature editor:
MB's faith vs. science page was a reaction to this commentary. My comments on that page were based on a desire to advocate the expression of all reasonable points of view, including those, which do not advocate strict scientific or philosophical naturalism. I am an advocate of science, but not of naturalism, and too often the two things are conflated without sufficient evidence. I am skeptical of the view that science "proves" much about ethics, or metaphysics, so I would like to defend the possibility at least that there are reasonable ways of approaching these subjects that, while not strictly scientific are perfectly reasonable. Perhaps when "people" say "let the viewpoints be expressed so the reader can make up their mind" they mean what you suggest, but I personally do not mean any such thing. I honestly think that substantive treatment of the issues is only possible when you address the strongest case from both sides, and therefore we ought to actively encourage people to engage in the practice of describing the best arguments for each position on an issue. And I would obviously include the best "opposition" to the arguments presented by all the sides. I don't actually think we are at all far apart on this issue. [[MRC]
I know it's not a widespread movement, but the specific intention of that page is to raise support for such a view. And several people were pushing it at the time. Anyway, what I object to is the conflation of naturalism with science, and there are quite a number of folks who seem to think that "science" proves naturalism. I've been around for three months or so, long enough to know that it is not the way the wikipedia has been run, but it is also clear that some folks want it to be run that way. As to why I included the comment about ethics and metaphysics, my only intention was to show that science has it's limits -- which I agree is a widely held view amongst responsible scientists. Though some 'scientific' fields like sociobiology have an amazingly high number of bad scientists posing as really bad philosophers, and as far as I am concerned this is not a good thing. But that comment is just a free and unsolicited opinion. MRC
MRC, elsewhere you state:
Recently there's been growing opposition to the expression of any POV which does not conform to a strict philosophical naturalism as "non-scientific" on the wikipedia, and this is something I strenuously object to.
I don't think wikipedia is supposed to be expressing any points of view, so that this is inherently a good thing. Might I suggest that the problem is the opposite - that POVs which are conforming to strict philosophical naturalism are not being repressed? If so, we might be able to ome up with something to do about that.