Talk:Christianity

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Christianity NPOV Poll (2/0/1)

Please remember to sign your votes with 4 tildes (~~~~) and update the vote tally when you vote.

Biased

  1. The latest edits of Syskeyia (who has been banned just yesterday for 24 hours for violating an agreement) are massively POV. For one, accusing Tanah Burung of "wanking" because of allowing something "despite the churches offical teachings" is blatantly POV. This user is not even making an effort of trying NPOV and in my opinion his latest edits to what we (even pantocratoria) considered a NPOV language should be reversed and if possible this user should be banned from editing morality-related entries which do not relate to his own nation. -- |Knoot|KNOOtalk 19:42, 2 Dec 2004 (GMT)
  2. Midlonia
  3. Manawskistan (actually User:205.133.95.123 (talk | contribs))

Not Biased

Neutral / not clear

  1. I'm fine with people improving the language to an NPOV standard as long as we don't get into these damned edit wars. I thought the original article was a bit heavy-handed with the examples on both sides, and I would have liked to see links to forum topics backing up the various claims of religion-wanking. I am not fine with people making an honest attempt to improve the language, only to have the changes reverted by a single user who consistently disagrees with the basic premise that NS != RL . → Fris Θtalk 20:09, 2 Dec 2004 (GMT)
I would not regard the edits by this user as honest attempts at POV. I wasted hours now on discussing compromises on this article but this individual is clearly not interested in having something approaching POV. And with that attitude, compromise becomes impossible. We spent an entire evening together, you and I, to get something decent and he then just flips it all over to something that a) is outragiously POV and pushing his dogmatic point of view b) is insulting c) does not make sense at all. Enough is enough. -- |Knoot|KNOOtalk 21:51, 2 Dec 2004 (GMT)

Comments/Questions

  1. To clarify, I was the one who changed Syskeyia's original blatantly POV phrase:
    "which officiates same-sex marriage in defiance of the traditional orthodox teaching of the Church"
    to "which officiates same-sex marriage despite the traditional orthodox teaching of the RL Catholic Church"
    ... in an attempt to bring it back towards NPOV. If anyone (besides User:Syskeyia) wants to tackle it further, be my guest. → Fris Θtalk 20:09, 2 Dec 2004 (GMT)
  2. I'd say '(In RL the Dignitatis Humanae compels Catholics to believe religious freedom to be a human right, but such nations don't acknowledge the existence of this document.)' is probably best terminated 'don't acknowledge the existence or ICly ignore it.' After all, a nation could RP Dignitatis Humanae existing but have an inquistion anyway, and ruling out this prospect is just as bad as ruling out RPing the nonexistence of the DH. Eurusea
    In this particular instance, the only reason Dignitatis Humanae became an issue is because the Syskeyia made it an issue. Had the other nation stated somewhere, "We follow ALL the doctrines of the RL Catholic Church," but then violated that by ignoring that particular bit, I'd agree with you. If on the other hand, Syskeyia demands IC that they follow it, and they respond IC that they don't acknowledge it, I can't agree with the concept that they're flauting the laws of the Church. The principle at stake here is each nation's right to determine their own IC guidelines, not to have them forced upon them by another player. → Fris Θtalk 16:18, 3 Dec 2004 (GMT)
    I agree with Eurusea. (Now who would have thought of that? :) ) ~Sys
  3. I'm not sure enought to write this anywhere else but surely it's not in order to talk about particular nations when refering to something as wide as Christianity. I think that it is important that the subject be based on Christianity and what it is in NS opposed to focusing on particular nations that use Christianity. But that's just me, and this seems rather late anyway. TBF

Earlier discussion

As you can see, I linked a shitload of pages to it but the article is still rather limited and POVish. Needs vast improvements. -- |Knoot|KNOOtalk 20:59, 26 Nov 2004 (GMT)

Made a few changes. First, Syskeyia is not a garrison state. It's more like a mix between Switzerland and Israel in that sort of regard. Also, I do not "abuse" Christianity in order to be "good." And, as I said in the little edit thing, when someone claims to be Catholic, RL Vatican documents should be said to apply unless the player states otherwise. ~Συσκευηα

Reverted said changes. RL Vatican documents are not assumed to be true unless a given nation states that they do. In free-form roleplay, nations are blank slates until a description is created by the player - there is no "default" setting of politics or religion. NationStates nations are unaffected by the real world unless they specifically choose to let them be affected, and that's what this wiki will reflect. → Fris Θtalk 21:08, 30 Nov 2004 (GMT)
Changed it back again. Going to what you said, if a nation claims to adhere to an RL religion, the doctrines, documents etc. of said religion should be said to apply to the nation unless the other nation claims a valid reason otherwise (i.e. living in a parallel universe, for example), and "because I want to" does not count as a valid reason in my book. See my message to you. ~Συσκευηα

does not count as a valid reason in my book - You didn't write "the book" on NationStates, Max did. In my year on NationStates, I've never seen anyone but you require that any portion of "freeform roleplay" conform to specifics of real world activities. We went through this once before, Syskeyia - NSwiki:Arbitration/Syskeyia#Final_decision states quite clearly

3) Nations in NationStates have no direct correspondence to real-world nations unless the players behind them specifically say that they do.

This is official NSwiki policy now, and your edits are not acceptable. If you continue with these reversions, your account will be blocked. → Fris Θtalk 21:29, 30 Nov 2004 (GMT)


Interpretation of Frisbeetaria seconded. -- |Knoot|KNOOtalk 21:35, 30 Nov 2004 (GMT)


"3) Nations in NationStates have no direct correspondence to real-world nations unless the players behind them specifically say that they do." Well, if they specifically claim to follow an RL religion, then it should be assumed that the tenets and such of said religion should apply to them unless they specify otherwise (i.e. alternate universes and such.) ~Συσκευηα
If I want to say that bananas are purple in Frisbeeteria, or I drive a Mercedes Benz with eight wheels, I can. I don't have to develop any sort of elaborate back-history to explain it. I think you're getting bent out of shape because it's religion, someting you put a value to ... but NS is fiction, and freeform fiction at that. Your opinion has been noted, but it carries no weight in my nation nor on NSwiki. → Fris Θtalk 22:42, 30 Nov 2004 (GMT)

moved Eurusea comment to Comments section above

Neutral language?

I have to say that while I agree with the assessment of a lot of nations in the article, I don't think that the language is particularly neutral. Is that just me? I don't have a problem with the article pointing out some of the common extremist positions which are taken by NS Christian countries, but words like "fatwah" are pretty over the top. --Pantocratoria 01:48, 1 Dec 2004 (GMT)


If only it was... *cough* Syskeyian Senate issues death warrant to obscure Tanah Burung society writer. Something he wrote was too "effeminate". -- |Knoot|KNOOtalk 11:00, 1 Dec 2004 (GMT)

Geez, Knootoss, must you show only one side of the story and omit the other? ~Συσκευηα
What exactly does that link prove? That your senate unanimously backed down from your unanimously issued fatwahish death threat because of massive international pressure and ridicule? You issued the thing in the first place. ICly. That is the key point here. You have acted perfectly well as a fundamentalist (or "orthodox", if you prefer) nation on that particular issue. -- |Knoot|KNOOtalk 21:35, 2 Dec 2004 (GMT)
Got to say, I don't think it is particularly orthodox to issue the death penalty to just about anybody, according to the copy of the catechism I've got on hand. I still don't like the term fatwah, I'd feel a lot better with a different word (although the term was created for situations exactly like this I suppose). My two ducats. ;) --Pantocratoria 13:01, 3 Dec 2004 (GMT)

moved specifics of User:Frisbeeteria changes to Comments section above

TB can't be "in defiance of" something they don't recognize at all, your interpretation nonwithstanding. If you can't do NPOV edits, then stay out of the topic altogether. → Fris Θtalk 17:54, 2 Dec 2004 (GMT)

reverting edit

We've *been* over the dignitas humanae now again and again and again. As with the arguments that removing entire paragraphs (which you edited in the first place) is... bad. Reverting. Hope to hear opinions of other sysops at this point on how to proceed with regards to this page. -- |Knoot|KNOOtalk 11:42, 15 Dec 2004 (GMT)


Any edit by User:Syskeyia which claims that real-world events control the nature of any NS nation should be reverted and the user blocked. This is in accordance with NSwiki:Arbitration/Syskeyia#Remedies, section 3, which states:
"3) User:Syskeyia shall be prohibited from editing any article: describing the history of a nation or the nation itself in such a fashion as to suggest that the nation in question is related to any real-life nation, or the history of the nation in question is related to any real-life event or events, without the permission of the player behind the nation, for an indefinite period of time."
→ Fris Θtalk 16:26, 15 Dec 2004 (GMT)

Alright, 2 things: 1. Why must we exclude the possibility that a Catholic nation might acknowledge the existence of Dignitatis Humanae and still have an Inquisition anyway? I'm not saying that have to acknowledge it, I'm just saying they could. Your edits, however, assumes that if a Catholic country persecutes non-Catholics, they must not acknowledge Dignitatis Humanae. 2. The Senatus Ultimum Consultum is not a "Catholic fatwah." It is a legal thing, having nothing to do with the hierchary of the Catholic Church. The one against Santyana (while deplorable) was not made against him for his religious beliefs, but rather for his excessive feminity and disgusting indulgence in vice.

Or does Knoot simply want to paint a picture of me as a vicious, genocial Catholic equivalent of bin Laden or something?

I wish Byzantium Glory/Hexagrams returned to NS. Then we could really have an example of "good religionwank." :) ~Συσ

Separate pages for Protestantism and other denominations?

It looks a little odd how Roman Catholicism has its own article, and the Christianity page just points you there, but the other denominations are just sections on the Christianity page. Wouldn't it be better to either have every denomination with its own article, or every denomination be a subsection of this article? --Pantocratoria 01:04, 6 Jan 2005 (GMT)

If someone wants to write up articles of the same sort of length and breadth as Roman Catholicism, they're welcome to create an expanded article and link to it from this one. Separating this article into myriad smaller articles wouldn't be an improvement, in my opinion. I've taken the liberty of excerpting a portion of the Roman Catholicism article and turned the simple link into a brief description with a link. Anyone who wants to do likewise with other religions is welcome to do so. Just make sure it's NS relevant, please. → Fris Θtalk 03:37, 6 Jan 2005 (GMT)
I have standardised the 'main article' links with each denomination. This should help. -- |Knoot|KNOOtalk 15:26, 6 Jan 2005 (GMT)
We're starting to have quite a few Protestant denominations appear on this page, it'd be quite easy to move that section off into its own little article as was done with Roman Catholicism, don't you think? You could have a paragraph in this article as was done with Catholicism. I think this would be a good idea for the visual balance - as it is, it looks like Roman Catholicism is shunted off into its own article and the only actual Christian denominations are Protestant. I'm aware that this isn't intentional, but by the sheer imbalance in the amount of specific coverage in this article, it suggests support for the stance held by a lot of extremist Baptist and other Protestant denominations about Catholics not being Christians. We've got stuck into Syskeya for being blatantly POV, let's not get accidentally POV ourselves. I know this sounds like a silly suggestion, but I think you'd have to agree that the visual difference between the one paragraph Catholic entry and the multiple paragraph Protestant entry is fairly striking. --Pantocratoria 06:23, 8 Mar 2005 (GMT)

Makaarian National Church

I think that the Makaarian National Church probably needs its own page. It may have broken away from Christianity, but with six gods, does it really count as Christian for the purposes of inclusion in this article? I thought I'd ask in the talk page rather than going ahead and removing it, since checking whether people disagree with your proposed changes before you perform them would avoid a lot of the more unfortunate arguments in this page's history. --Pantocratoria 17:28, 22 Jan 2005 (GMT)

But then it is a rather small section. I think it should be left on this page, but in its desciption it should be clearly stated that while it may have broken away from Christianity, some doubt whether it qualifies as a denomination of Christianity because of its considerable differences. Or something along those lines. Rechze(talk) 03:10, 23 Jan 2005 (GMT)
I'd agree with Pantocratoria on this one. Many religions accept elements of Christianity, Christ alongside their own gods, etc. Fair enough. But no one would call the Bahai faith, for instance, a sect of Christianity. Like Islam, it's influenced by Christianity but stands outside it. Same with the Makaarian church, seems to me -- and it's far more interesting as a stand-alone religion anyway. Perhaps there could be a link from the Christianity page to faiths with Christian elements, though, this being one.TB 03:27, 25 Jan 2005 (GMT)
After some thought, I have changed my support to the creation of a seperate page as suggested by Pantocratoria. Rechze(talk) 02:32, 26 Jan 2005 (GMT)

Radicalism/fundamentalism

Re: recent changes.

Although I agree the title "Radicalism and fundamentalism" is more more cumbersome then "Fundamentalism" as Constantinopolis suggested, I still think "radical" is IMO still a better term then fundamentalism because using fundamentalism as a header implies that homopbia, inquisitions and organised persecution are somehow 'fundamental' to the Christian faith and that not doing it is liberal interpretation. I think the title can still be improved, but just 'fundamentalism' to denote the RAWR PERSECUTE Christian nations is IMO insufficient because a nation can be Christian fundamentalist without engaging in elf xenocide ;) -- |Knoot|KNOOtalk 21:02, 21 May 2005 (GMT)

Ok, what we need here is a special term to denote the RAWR PERSECUTE Christian nations... time for some brainstorming! "Extremism"? "Christo-fascism"? -- Constantinopolis 20:56, 22 May 2005 (GMT)