Wikipedia: Traditional arguments for the existence of God/Talk

Many have come to a belief in the existence of the Christian concept of God through the historical evidence of Jesus Christ. The line of reasoning includes his selection of twelve common men who deserted him the night when he needed them most; then after his resurrection – and especially after Pentecost – they were emboldened and transformed; willing to die for their proclamation that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead. Perhaps someone will develop this argument further before I get to it, but this is the best I can do at the moment. <>< tbc

One other point I'd like to make vis a vis the development of this article: The Bible doesn't attempt to "prove" God's existence. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that "since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." [Romans 1:20, NIV] I bring this up because I think an article about arguments for the existence of God ought also to include a theologian's comments about this phenomenon. <>< tbc

I think we need to rename this page (along with Obviously Bad...) Who decides if an argument is traditonally respectable, or obviously bad? I think these names prejudge the issue of which arguments are good, and which are bad, and cause us to take a contorvercial stand on the value of an argument. It would be better to just present the arguments, on appropriately neutral pages. Of course if an argument is widely considered to be unsuccessful for various reasons, we should include that data in the text of the article, but we shouldn't force the decision in the naming scheme. I think Larry and many others should object that these names violate the NeutralPointOfView. Moreover, the fact that one title is "obviously bad" and the other is "traditionally respectable" (rather than "obviously good") implies an overall bias against theism.

I don't suggest that we call the article obviously good arguments for the existence of God, since that is obviously just as bad as the obviously bad article title, but none the less we ought to change it. Though it is more obvious that the obviously bad article has a non-NPOV title.

Oh, and one more thing. I'm not objecting to the notion that some arguments for the existance of God are obviosly bad, and I'm even pretty confident that all the arguments discribed on that page are pretty obviously bad. The problem comes when we add more arguments, which some folks think are obviously bad, and others think are traditonally respectable. (In fact I'm pretty sure this would be the case with Anselm's Ontological arguement)MRC

: I should point out that the pages in question are part of Larrys Text, which is simply a series of undergraduate lectures that he dumped into the wiki with the intention of forming them into encyclopedia articles. It's been slow going. :) -- STG

: As for who decides – well, postmodernists may have weakened the appeal to objective truth, but rational arguments do still hold some weight in academic discourse these days. I tried to improve the neutral point of view in the arguments for the existence of God article. So let's see where this discussion leads... <>< tbc