Talk:Sathya Sai Baba/Archive 18

2nd para : Not wiki standard text

Reference the second par, 'Multiple studies have suggested that his acts were based on sleight of hand or had other explanations that were not supernatural, although his devotees believe them to be signs of his divinity but they have been quashed by his devotees time and again.'

Ending the sentence with 'but they have been quashed by his devotees time and again.' is not proper. Nowhere have the claims of divinity/miracles made by Sathya Sai Baba and his devotees been vindicated by controlled science experiments and there is no agreement amongst socio-religious scholars of the day on his divinity or miracles. To keep this sentence neutral and avoid the last part , which appears to be the view of a confirmed devotee we should just remove the last part and keep the sentence as ' Multiple studies have suggested that his acts were based on sleight of hand or had other explanations that were not supernatural, although his devotees believe them to be signs of his divinity.' This is exactly the status quo as of now, his devotees believe in his divinity and consider his acts to be genuine miracles, while there are also multiple people who subscribe to the 'sleight of hand' theory. Suksane (talk) 17:05, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

@Suksane: yikes, thank you for spotting this! The text was changed about a week ago, by an anonymous (IP) editor, to insert the "quashed by his devotees" text. It's been reverted to the previous phrasing now. --bonadea contributions talk 17:13, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up! I had earlier objected to the statement 'Multiple Studies'. So where are the artifacts of the controlled science experiments for Wikipedia to say 'Multiple Studies have suggested'? As these are not 'Studies' in scientific terms, the sentence needs to reworded. Weather one believes or not is not the issue but stating that there have been scientific experiments (studies) suggesting something, is false! Venkatant (talk) 06:16, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Nowhere in the article does it say that there have been "controlled science experiments". In English, the word "study" is not synonymous with "controlled scientific experiment". We don't need scientific experiments to prove that miracles such as faith healing, materialisations, or clairvoyance are not real. For that reason, it is a little overkill to even mention that "multiple studies have concluded" that there were other explanations, but it was inserted as a kind of concession to those who do believe that he had divine powers, since the article does cite multiple studies. The alternative would be to restore the previous phrasing that state outright that his "miracles" were based on sleight of hand or other rational explanations. --bonadea contributions talk 10:55, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Celebrity devotees?

How about a section listing celebrity devotees? Nicolas Maduro and his wife are devotees, according to William Neumann's new book about Venezuela Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse.--TDKehoe (talk) 00:42, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

CIA Report Misquote / Bracketed Addition

The third sentence of the "Characteristics, beliefs and practices of devotees" quotes a CIA report as follows:

In the same report, the CIA notes that "India has a small industry of fake holy men who perform magic tricks for a living [for a generally imbecilic Indian populace, including Indian Prime Minister Rao],"

Brackets are normally used in a quote to clarify a passage for context, NOT to change the meaning of what was stated. In this case, as far as I can find, nowhere does the CIA report characterize the Indian populace as "generally imbecilic." Secondly, the report doesn't connect the mentioned industry of fraud with then Prime Minister Rao. Rao is mentioned several times later in the report, once regarding his plan to model a new educational policy on the Sai Baba educational system and it also states that he "may be a devotee."

I suggest simply deleting the bracketed portion of the quote. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Virgaeatmos (talk • contribs) 15:10, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, @Virgaeatmos:. That bit was inserted by an anonymous user a few weeks ago. The quotes from the CIA report had been changed a couple of times so I restored the actual quotes, removing one that is in the cited source but doesn't really have anything to do with the characteristics of his devotees. --bonadea contributions talk 19:32, 24 April 2022 (UTC)