Talk:Science & Religion: A Symposium

I've added several excerpts on this book from major journals including The New York Times and Nature (journal). I believe this will make the book's significance clear to most viewers. THus, I plan to remove the tags. --Firefly322 (talk) 02:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Unencyclopeadic content

Regurgitating lists of reviews (and quotes from them) is not encyclopaedic, so I'm moving this section to talk. If anybody can turn this into enecyclopaedic discussion of the topic, then they're welcome to. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:36, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

• "Regurgitating"? That seems insulting considering it took me days to research these reviews. They are quite encyclopedic. Perhaps they don't appeal to a certain sort of pop music sense kind of sensibility, but wikipedia is about all sorts of encyclopedic knowledge and tastes. Please reply, I think your judgement of these being unencyclopedic is without intellectual foundation and I think it deserves a 3rd opinion if we can't resolve it. --Firefly322 (talk) 15:06, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, "regurgitating" an unencyclopaedic "indiscriminate collection of information" (in this case a list of reviews and quotations thereof), without integrating it into a cohesive article explaining the topic. Please read WP:Writing better articles. Your attempts to date have generally been verbosely uninformative. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 17:59, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

• OK, I'll try to give a third party opinion. Hrafn is correct, although his comments would have been better if he had been civil. If there are points in these reviews that can be used a sources for proper encyclopecic content, then that should be done. Otherwise the review material should not be used. I leave it to others to detemine whether the reviews make points that are not in the article, yet should be. --Bduke (Discussion) 22:48, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Sample of reviews

There were a significant number of reviews in various media print sources at the time of publication, including several that remain well-known today.

• Review: Nature v. 127 (May 23 1931), p. 775

Excerpt: "If a series of popular broadcast talks on science and religion is to be commended at all, the publication of the talks in print is certainly to be commended, because the peculiar danger of this form of instruction is that there should be left upon the mind of the listener a hazy impression, which he cannot clear up except by subsequent reading and thinking. We do not agree with people who write to the papers to the effect that these talks are unsettling to those who listen to them. ... The contributors to these twelve talks include five distinguished men of science, one philosopher, and six theologians--or, at any rate, churchmen. We think anyone would agree that these twelve chapters are more suitable for careful reading than for mere listening, and that, to the intelligent reader, they may convey a fairly clear idea of authoritative opinion on the problems discussed. He will gather also that when it comes to ultimate questions; there is divergence of opinion, not only between scienfific workers and theologians, but also between, let us say, physicists and biologists; and he may be reminded of the proverbial query as to what is to be done when the doctors differ."

• Reviewer: Duffus, R. L., Lion and Lamb Meet in Peace in "Science and Religion" The New York Times (Early City Edition) (July 5 1931), p. 12

Excerpt: "The spirit of tolerance runs through the discussion. There is no denial by the scientists that the religious emotion exists, nor by the clergy that the pursuit of objective truth through the experimental method is legitimate and admirable. The two schools are in agreement that there is a boundary between the two methods, though perhaps not in agreement as to where, precisely, that boundary lies."

• Review: Sullivan, W. L., New York Herald Tribune (Aug. 16 1931), p. 14
• Review: Prichard, H. A., Churchman (Oct. 31 1931), p. 4
• Review: Saturday Review v. 151 (Apr. 25 1931), p. 614

Excerpt: "All the essays are well worth reading and pondering upon; they may not carry one to any settled conclusion, but each will stimulate to criticism and independent thought."

• Review: Crozer Quarterly v. 8 (Oct. 1931)
• Reivew: The Living Church v. 86 (Nov. 21 1931)
• Review: Ginzburg, Benjamin, The New Republic v. 68 (Aug. 19 1931), p. 26

Excerpt: "Stimulating and suggestive, particularly to the intelligent reader who cares to read between the lines."

• Review: Underhill, Evelyn, Spectator v. 146 (May 30 1931), p. 869

Excerpt: "Gradually a common mind on the central subject of debate begins to be sensed by [the reader]. All emphasize the failure of determinism, the growing sense of mystery, the increased humility of the scientific mind. There is a general agreement that whilst science may give us factual truths from her own angle, only religion---understood in the broadest and deepest sense---can give us value, quality, the significance of that reality within which the factual truths of science abide. Thus their competing accounts of experience reinforce rather than contradict one another."

[ End of unencyclopeadic content Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:36, 11 March 2009 (UTC) ]