The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Although there is consensus that the subject is notable, there is also consensus that this article is more a personal essay rather than an encyclopedia article on the subject. A new article on this subject can certainly be written, but I will not userfy this one, since discussants did not find it to be an acceptable starting place for an article. MelanieN (talk) 02:54, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Science and the Bible (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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The article contains too POV problems. Given the fact that it is a religious (hence a bit controversial) topic, it is often reasonable to expect extreme discrepancies in the text. For example, portions of the article reads like:

• "Panbabylonianists regard the Hebrew Bible as entirely derived from the culture and mythology of Babylonia as it stood during the 6th century BCE, during the Babylonian captivity."
• "Current mainstream views suggests the possibility that some elements, particularly of the Torah, are independent of Babylonian influence, dating perhaps as early as the 9th or 10th century BCE, but the significant influence of Babylonian mythology and Babylonian cosmology on the worldview presented in the Tanakh is still beyond doubt."
• "The worldview of the Tanakh (or Old Testament) appears to be that of a flat earth (e.g.Isaiah 44:24 ) in a geocentric universe (e.g. Joshua 10:12-13, Ps. 93:1, 1 Chron. 16:30), a view in line with Mesopotamian astronomy of the period"

On the other hand, the other extreme appears:

• "The most supportive bible passage of their view was Job 26:7, where Job declares that God "hangs the earth on nothing", which for its time was very close to how modern astronomers would describe the Earth's position."
• "Biblical cosmology provides sporadic glimpses that may be stitched together to form a Biblical impression of the physical universe."

Furthermore, I do not think a literary criticism article should be here, especially when there are a very wide range of views and interpretation of any text. Kevinjonpalma11 (talk) 08:32, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep It's a poor article which needs fixing but a notable topic. I'm not clear which of the reasons at WP:DEL-REASON you believe apply. NPOV issues aren't a reason to delete, nor is your opinion about literary criticism (which should be discussed at the article talk page). Doug Weller talk 09:47, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:40, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:40, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Bible-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:40, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:41, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per WP:NUKEANDPAVE. This is an OR fest and should've never been written in the first place. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:28, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete -- This is a rather bad ESSAY trying to attack the alleged unscientific nature of the Bible. The tag that it needs to be rewritten is fully deserved. However, TNT is a much better solution. I suspect that all the content is rather better dealt with elsewhere in WP. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:07, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - I, too, could have sworn there were already articles for this. Something like "Scientific criticism of religion" and "religious persecution of science" at the very least, but I can't find them now. Could someone share those? Also, to the delete bids, if you're going to call WP:OR or WP:SYN, please provide examples. This article is heavily sourced and (in general) correctly cites opinion in context as a quote from a reliable source. Don't nuke the whole article because of a crappy intro! Jergling (talk) 22:02, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Clearly many technical problems with the article, but the topic is important and improvement can be made. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:23, 27 September 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 14:23, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 14:23, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment, numerous books held in libraries on this subject, see here so appears to be articleworthy, would be surprised that this is not covered in religious courses/at seminaries, possibly some words need to be added to Relationship between religion and science with a link to this article. Coolabahapple (talk) 15:05, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Article reads like literary criticism. Library books about "science and bible" (or any other religious texts like Quran) would either 1) prove the bible scientifically accurate, or 2) dismiss the bible as scientifically inaccurate. Its hard to be neutral in this comparison, given that interpretations are very varied - even references would be nothing but interpretations. As a neutral encyclopedia, is it even a good idea to have an article like this? 130.105.225.176 (talk) 06:20, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per WP:TNT; this is badly referenced personal essay. I don't believe it's adding value to the encyclopedia at this time. The topic may be notable but the current execution is too far below what one would expect to find in an encyclopedia. Better to start from a clean slate. K.e.coffman (talk) 08:00, 2 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per WP:TNT. The subject matter could very likely have a good, decently sourced article, but this particular version is most certainly not it. As mentioned, it just seems like this is someone's personal essay. While it seems to cite numerous sources, if you actually look into some of them, you'll see that a lot of the sources used are not actually supporting the claims being made, which results in large portions of the article being pure synthesis. So, in short, while the subject is potentially notable, this article is pretty much unsalvageable, and would need to be completely rewritten from the ground up. 64.183.45.226 (talk) 18:31, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete; essay with original research by synthesis. The cosmology topics are better covered in the respective "history of ..." articles or sections; the other stuff seems peripheral both from the biblical and scientific history perspectives.  Sandstein  11:31, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment It's a notable topic by our criteria and I don't think that salting it can be justified. I realise that we can delete it for NPOV reasons, but stubbing it might be a better alternative. Doug Weller talk 13:11, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as it currently seems questionable for the necessary improvements that it would need, therefore let's not cause ourselves unnecessary work by simply letting it stay and no one actually taking care of it. SwisterTwister talk 22:03, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.