Talk:Mary Hanford Ford

non-religious or not

Fine let's talk about it, Guy Macon.

to distill the policy basis of the debate, the fundamental problem is one of WP:NPOV: "religion=none" essentially assumes that everyone must have some religion, and that religion is an essential characteristic of every person, but we live in increasingly secular times, and for many people religion simply isn't an attribute they would apply to themselves. It's a form of begging the question. Religion=none would almost certainly be wrong, in any article on Wikipedia.

That covers the case for those who do not self-identify with any specific religion.

Another issue is noted: those who prominently self-identify as having a philosophical position on religion, but one which implicitly or explicitly rejects faith. In these cases in my view it may be legitimate to mention secularism or atheism as a philosophy, and that would have qualified support according to the debate, but it is clear that they are not religions and it is both confusing and technically incorrect to label them as such. It would be unwise to use such a categorisation without prior discussion on Talk pages on a case by case basis and it would apply only to those who are prominently so identified:

Per 1) as I said repeatedly in my edit comments to your changes, the biographies all point out she had a big change from being an atheist to believing in the survival of the soul on the death of her father. I believe that bends towards "those who prominently self-identify as having a philosophical position on religion…" However the actual info available doesn't elaborate beyond that so I was compromising with a more general category, especially in light of more extreme examples of atheism, for "non-religious". I'm the one who researched this and wrote the article though it is of course open to review and consideration to make the article better. I think it does a disservice to the article representing her views and how they were understood by sources speaking to her life to distinctly dismiss her life as an unbeliever because of her conversion to believing something which evolved over time.

What's your point aside from a categorical approach to dismissing usage? --Smkolins (talk) 21:11, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

My point is that there is a clear consensus against your preferred version. RfCs are how Wikipedia gauges consensus, and the closing summary by the uninvolved closing administrator is binding upon all editors. There was an RfC at Template talk:Infobox person#RfC: Religion infobox entries for individuals that have no religion The closing sumarry was crystal clear:

"The result is unambiguously in favour of omitting the parameter altogether for "none", "atheist", "secular" and variants thereof - i.e. those who either do not identify as religious, or who explicitly identify as non-religious. In response to the additional point raised below, there's no obvious reason why this would not apply to historical or fictional characters, institutions etc. If people really think they should be considered separately then feel free to start an additional RfC but this one provides ample grounds for deprecating the religion parameter in regard to secular / atheist philosophy in in any article"

and

"It may be legitimate to mention secularism or atheism as a philosophy, and that would have qualified support according to the debate, but it is clear that they are not religions and it is both confusing and technically incorrect to label them as such."

You want to label "Nonreligious: as a religion. The RfC is clear in saying that it is clear that "nonreligious" is not a religion and that it is both confusing and technically incorrect to label it as such.

Feel free to post a new RfC if you believe that the community consensus on this has changed in the last 25 days, but until you do you are required to follow the consensus established in the RfC. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:23, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

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