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Reporting errors |
Some factual errors in the book: 1. The Hindu God Kirshna was the eighth child of Devaki. The birth is not described anywhere as virgin birth. 2. The circle in the middle of the Indian flag represents "dharma chakra" not the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi. 3. The Tamil Tigers assassinated an ex-prime minister of India, Raiv Gandhi, not ex-President of India.
These are minor errors and do not take away anything from the main thesis of the book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.136.50.33 ( talk) 16:44, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Alright, you want verifiable references for widely known facts even for elementary school children in India, here you go. I found these in just 10 minutes.
1. Hindu god Krishna was the eighth child of Devaki. The birth was not claimed to be a virgin birth. I cannot prove a negative :-).
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/religion/festkrishna.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna#Birth
2. The circle in the middle of the Indian flag represents the Ahoka Dhara Chakra, not the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka_Chakra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_India
http://www.iloveindia.com/national-symbols/national-flag.html
hubpages.com/hub/national_flag_of_india
3. The Tamil terrorist group LTTE assassinated ex-Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi, not ex-President of India.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E5DF1430F93BA15755C0A9609C8B63
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Tigers#Assassinations
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1503/15030170.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2360099,prtpage-1.cms
If I want to express my opinion I will go elsewhere like Amazon. But these are not my opinion. These are well known facts. The story of Krishna is told and retold starting even when an Indian child is still in its mother's womb. Asking for a verifiable reference for this is just silly. Well, you asked for it and I am giving you three. One of them is from Channel 4. Hope this is verifiable enough.
As regards assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, it happened so long ago I am unable to provide contemporaneous newspaper references. However, I have given references from two leading Indian newspapers and one American newspaper with somewhat sullied reputation with its reporting leading up to the Iraq war.
Finally, regarding the dharma chakra in the Indian flag. Before independence the flag of Indian National Congress used to have the spinning wheel in the center. After independence the spinning wheel was replaced by the Ashoka Dharma Chakra. Once again this fact is well known to everyone in India starting from elementary school children. Since you asked for it I have given references that I hope you will find verifiable.
These errors show that not everything written by Hitchens is accurate. I do accept and appreciate his book. My disappointment is that he did not take on Hinduism for untouchability and caste system. I am sure Hitchens' main target was the three so called monotheistic religions. But by giving false facts about Hindu religion Hitchens has inadvertently offered shelter to the fundamentalists.
From a brief search on the web it seems the book contains many other erroneous facts. Therefore, I think it is important for a Wiki user to be alerted about these in this page. So, I ask you reinstate the edits I made.
-- Dileepan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.60.27.98 ( talk) 18:51, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
1. "The Hindu God Krishna was the eighth child of Devaki. The birth is not described anywhere as virgin birth." - According to Bhagavata Purana divine Krishna was born without a sexual union, but by divine "mental transmission" from the mind of Vasudeva into the womb of Devaki. This clearly resembles the Christian teaching of the virgin birth of Jesus. 2. "The circle in the middle of the Indian flag represents 'dharma chakra' not the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi." - Yes, this is true. But Hitchens says "This wheel - which still appears as the symbol on the Indian flag - was the emblem of Gandhi's rejection of modernity". This statement, I think, is being misrepresented. Taken out of context. I don't think Hitchens is saying that it represents the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi. I think Hitchens is only referencing it as something that Gandhi also used, nothing more. I don't think Hitchens would make this kind of mistake given how well read he is. 3. "The Tamil Tigers assassinated an ex-prime minister of India, Raiv Gandhi, not ex-President of India." - Raiv Gandhi was indeed ex-Prime Minister at the time of his death but he was also the President of the Indian National Congress. Hitchens in his book doesn't mention Raiv Gandhi by name but is alluding to him when he speaks of the Tamils as having pioneered suicide murder and then says "This barbarous technique, which was also used by them to assassinate an elected president of India... ." I think Hitchens was aware of Raiv Gandhi's position as President of the Indian National Congress. This is probably what he was alluding to. In any case, I'm sure Hitchens would have known that Raiv Gandhi was not the Prime Minister at the time of his assassination. This is, after all, common knowledge. Peter Jensen ( talk) 01:10, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Regarding this edit, the lack of an article in this intro reads more like news style-writing than that of an encyclopedia. Despite noting this, my edit has been reverted twice now without explanation (indeed, FreeKnowledgeCreator even retraced my contributions, removing a similarly placed article from a much larger edit I made a few hours ago to Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now). Apart from a slight case of ownership here, was there a reason this edit was reverted? As in, one that should have been included in one of the two edit summaries? Jg2904 ( talk) 07:28, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
If we were to use an informal compression of this sort, desperate for brevity, then the lead section is probably where to do it. A case could also be made for using it when the person(s) being referred to is/are non-notable ("Among those wounded in the mass-shooting were cashier Betty Garcia, and café patrons Jim McSnorkel and April N'gomo."), but people might oppose even in those cases, as also being too newsy. The thing is, though, this lead is not wanting for space; it is not like the four-paragraph monsters at
Barack Obama and
Electronic cigarette. So, the need does not appear to arise for any kind of heavy-handed textual compression like dropping this use of the. Such clipped constructions can become very awkward, especially when a proper name appears in them. E.g., let's mangle the Harris prose quoted above: "Anyone will notice Christian mystic Meister Eckhart often sounded very much like a Buddhist". That's almost unparseable without reading twice and would be even worse in a screen reader, since "Christian Mystic" would sound like someone's stage name. It reads like something Hunter S. Thompson would write after two joints and half a bottle of whiskey. I confess I often write this way when taking notes (without chemical influence), but we should take pains to decompress such "verbal ZIP files" when writing in articles here. The same goes for a lot of things, like habitual dropping of that in constructions in which people tend to drop it when talking aloud (as in my previous sentence, where I shortened "I confess that I often write this way ..." – note how much informality and parsing difficulty the deletion introduces); use of who when whom is intended; forgetting to expand acronyms on first usage; referring to the United States as "America"; using "US" (or "U.S.", if you insist) as a noun; forgetting the comma after an introduction like "In 1999" or "After moving to Paris"; etc., etc. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but excessive brevity is not, or that very saying would simply be "Brevity is wit." —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
20:56, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
PS: Another example, mangling the Tyson material quited above: "Its existence had been predicted just a few years earlier by British-born physicist ..." is awkward, because the construction, by its nature, leads us to expect a collective noun phrase after "British", as in "... by British researchers at the Royal Society of Omphaloskeptics", a construction that would not take the at all, unless in reference to a set of previously mentioned persons. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:07, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
I reverted the first time because it's unnecessary and just sounded worse to my ear, so being that my reason for reverting was essentially "I disagree with this change" I didn't think further explanation than the default undo summary was needed. The definite article there is grammatically acceptable, sure, I just think it sounds worse with it than without it. -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 21:36, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
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Hello fellow Wikipedians! I intend to translate the article into Greek but I am a little worried that there are too many citations to the book itself. Would that be original research? Thanks! Τζερόνυμο ( talk) 19:41, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 19:50, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
God Is Not Great article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: Index, 1Auto-archiving period: 90 days |
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Index
|
|
This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by ClueBot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.
Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. |
Reporting errors |
Some factual errors in the book: 1. The Hindu God Kirshna was the eighth child of Devaki. The birth is not described anywhere as virgin birth. 2. The circle in the middle of the Indian flag represents "dharma chakra" not the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi. 3. The Tamil Tigers assassinated an ex-prime minister of India, Raiv Gandhi, not ex-President of India.
These are minor errors and do not take away anything from the main thesis of the book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.136.50.33 ( talk) 16:44, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Alright, you want verifiable references for widely known facts even for elementary school children in India, here you go. I found these in just 10 minutes.
1. Hindu god Krishna was the eighth child of Devaki. The birth was not claimed to be a virgin birth. I cannot prove a negative :-).
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/religion/festkrishna.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna#Birth
2. The circle in the middle of the Indian flag represents the Ahoka Dhara Chakra, not the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka_Chakra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_India
http://www.iloveindia.com/national-symbols/national-flag.html
hubpages.com/hub/national_flag_of_india
3. The Tamil terrorist group LTTE assassinated ex-Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi, not ex-President of India.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E5DF1430F93BA15755C0A9609C8B63
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Tigers#Assassinations
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1503/15030170.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2360099,prtpage-1.cms
If I want to express my opinion I will go elsewhere like Amazon. But these are not my opinion. These are well known facts. The story of Krishna is told and retold starting even when an Indian child is still in its mother's womb. Asking for a verifiable reference for this is just silly. Well, you asked for it and I am giving you three. One of them is from Channel 4. Hope this is verifiable enough.
As regards assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, it happened so long ago I am unable to provide contemporaneous newspaper references. However, I have given references from two leading Indian newspapers and one American newspaper with somewhat sullied reputation with its reporting leading up to the Iraq war.
Finally, regarding the dharma chakra in the Indian flag. Before independence the flag of Indian National Congress used to have the spinning wheel in the center. After independence the spinning wheel was replaced by the Ashoka Dharma Chakra. Once again this fact is well known to everyone in India starting from elementary school children. Since you asked for it I have given references that I hope you will find verifiable.
These errors show that not everything written by Hitchens is accurate. I do accept and appreciate his book. My disappointment is that he did not take on Hinduism for untouchability and caste system. I am sure Hitchens' main target was the three so called monotheistic religions. But by giving false facts about Hindu religion Hitchens has inadvertently offered shelter to the fundamentalists.
From a brief search on the web it seems the book contains many other erroneous facts. Therefore, I think it is important for a Wiki user to be alerted about these in this page. So, I ask you reinstate the edits I made.
-- Dileepan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.60.27.98 ( talk) 18:51, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
1. "The Hindu God Krishna was the eighth child of Devaki. The birth is not described anywhere as virgin birth." - According to Bhagavata Purana divine Krishna was born without a sexual union, but by divine "mental transmission" from the mind of Vasudeva into the womb of Devaki. This clearly resembles the Christian teaching of the virgin birth of Jesus. 2. "The circle in the middle of the Indian flag represents 'dharma chakra' not the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi." - Yes, this is true. But Hitchens says "This wheel - which still appears as the symbol on the Indian flag - was the emblem of Gandhi's rejection of modernity". This statement, I think, is being misrepresented. Taken out of context. I don't think Hitchens is saying that it represents the spinning wheel of Mahatma Gandhi. I think Hitchens is only referencing it as something that Gandhi also used, nothing more. I don't think Hitchens would make this kind of mistake given how well read he is. 3. "The Tamil Tigers assassinated an ex-prime minister of India, Raiv Gandhi, not ex-President of India." - Raiv Gandhi was indeed ex-Prime Minister at the time of his death but he was also the President of the Indian National Congress. Hitchens in his book doesn't mention Raiv Gandhi by name but is alluding to him when he speaks of the Tamils as having pioneered suicide murder and then says "This barbarous technique, which was also used by them to assassinate an elected president of India... ." I think Hitchens was aware of Raiv Gandhi's position as President of the Indian National Congress. This is probably what he was alluding to. In any case, I'm sure Hitchens would have known that Raiv Gandhi was not the Prime Minister at the time of his assassination. This is, after all, common knowledge. Peter Jensen ( talk) 01:10, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Regarding this edit, the lack of an article in this intro reads more like news style-writing than that of an encyclopedia. Despite noting this, my edit has been reverted twice now without explanation (indeed, FreeKnowledgeCreator even retraced my contributions, removing a similarly placed article from a much larger edit I made a few hours ago to Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now). Apart from a slight case of ownership here, was there a reason this edit was reverted? As in, one that should have been included in one of the two edit summaries? Jg2904 ( talk) 07:28, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
If we were to use an informal compression of this sort, desperate for brevity, then the lead section is probably where to do it. A case could also be made for using it when the person(s) being referred to is/are non-notable ("Among those wounded in the mass-shooting were cashier Betty Garcia, and café patrons Jim McSnorkel and April N'gomo."), but people might oppose even in those cases, as also being too newsy. The thing is, though, this lead is not wanting for space; it is not like the four-paragraph monsters at
Barack Obama and
Electronic cigarette. So, the need does not appear to arise for any kind of heavy-handed textual compression like dropping this use of the. Such clipped constructions can become very awkward, especially when a proper name appears in them. E.g., let's mangle the Harris prose quoted above: "Anyone will notice Christian mystic Meister Eckhart often sounded very much like a Buddhist". That's almost unparseable without reading twice and would be even worse in a screen reader, since "Christian Mystic" would sound like someone's stage name. It reads like something Hunter S. Thompson would write after two joints and half a bottle of whiskey. I confess I often write this way when taking notes (without chemical influence), but we should take pains to decompress such "verbal ZIP files" when writing in articles here. The same goes for a lot of things, like habitual dropping of that in constructions in which people tend to drop it when talking aloud (as in my previous sentence, where I shortened "I confess that I often write this way ..." – note how much informality and parsing difficulty the deletion introduces); use of who when whom is intended; forgetting to expand acronyms on first usage; referring to the United States as "America"; using "US" (or "U.S.", if you insist) as a noun; forgetting the comma after an introduction like "In 1999" or "After moving to Paris"; etc., etc. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but excessive brevity is not, or that very saying would simply be "Brevity is wit." —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
20:56, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
PS: Another example, mangling the Tyson material quited above: "Its existence had been predicted just a few years earlier by British-born physicist ..." is awkward, because the construction, by its nature, leads us to expect a collective noun phrase after "British", as in "... by British researchers at the Royal Society of Omphaloskeptics", a construction that would not take the at all, unless in reference to a set of previously mentioned persons. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:07, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
I reverted the first time because it's unnecessary and just sounded worse to my ear, so being that my reason for reverting was essentially "I disagree with this change" I didn't think further explanation than the default undo summary was needed. The definite article there is grammatically acceptable, sure, I just think it sounds worse with it than without it. -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 21:36, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on God Is Not Great. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 15:49, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians! I intend to translate the article into Greek but I am a little worried that there are too many citations to the book itself. Would that be original research? Thanks! Τζερόνυμο ( talk) 19:41, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 19:50, 5 September 2020 (UTC)