Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Religious explanations of gravity

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 redirect to Theistic science. Consensus to redirect as this is more essay than encyclopedic article D P 18:55, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Religious explanations of gravity

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This isn't an article, it is three isolated comments spread out over a period of two hundred and thirty years strung together on a coat rack. It seems an attempt to synthesize these three quotes into an encyclopedic article on the subject. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:16, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:20, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:22, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

delete Essay constructed of original (and dubious) research. Mangoe (talk) 20:19, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
weak delete or redirect to ~~Intelligent falling~~ history of gravitational theory. It seems like there's potential for developing the idea by looking at some older sources, but I'm not seeing quite enough in my search and the current version doesn't sufficiently establish the notability of the general subject. It furthermore doesn't seem to touch on any religious perspectives other than Christianity, and a good portion of sources on the latter seem to be satirical. If anyone's interested to try, here are some relatively recent sources (none are stellar, though): --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 20:43, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
~~keep~~: I think this can be properly developed, Jean Buridan's celestial impetus for example.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 21:11, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Two comments are capable of satisfying GNG and the length of time between them is not necessarily relevant. Mere juxtaposition of two quotes that are obviously about the same subject is not a synthesis. James500 (talk) 21:19, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"List of religious explanations of gravity" would work for me.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 21:22, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My point in mentioning the time frame is that this is not really a topic that has been the subject of serious discourse amongst religious scholars. Although Newton did write nearly as much about religion as he did about science, he was not and is not considered particularly relevant in that field. It is also worth noting that in his day it would have been extremely dangerous to express any opinion that seemed to question the existence of the Christian God. The Darwin comment is just an offhand comparison to his own field of study, he was neither a religious scholar nor a physicist. The last comment is from someone I have never heard of (and that we do not have an article on) who apparently voiced his opinion on the subject in a book he wrote in 1925. Three comments, one of which is not actually a religious explanation of gravity at all, none of them from persons eminent in the field of religious scholarship, does not seem at all sufficient for us to base an encyclopedia article on. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:11, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

delete: You're right, Buridan would be anachronistic anyway.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 22:50, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. The fact we don't have an article on someone seems to prove nothing since we can't even manage to match basic works of biography such as the ODNB, our coverage of biography is skewered towards recent popular culture and we have some truly stunning omissions. James500 (talk) 04:53, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to theistic science, which seems to have broader coverage of the general idea of religious explanations of scientific concepts. There just isn't enough here to justify a full article. Orser67 (talk) 18:37, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not a valid target, at least not as far as the three quotations in the article are concerned. Mangoe (talk) 16:15, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect (history intact) to Theistic science. The material itself looks reasonable to be covered somewhere, Theistic science looks good, but as a topic it is not the subject of independent coverage and is not a suitable stand alone article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:23, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The meagre start is not a reason to delete because it is explicit policy that "one person may start an article with an overview of a subject or a few random facts." There is no synthetic proposition and juxtaposition is not synthesis. There is plenty more to be said about the topic as it is discussed extensively in sources such as God and Nature which states, "In the decades after Newton's Principia, theologians and religious popularizers latched onto the grace of gravity as a valuable weapon in the ongoing fight against atheism." Even now, people talk of the God particle. If we were to merge then the most appropriate target would be history of gravitational theory in which the ideas of theologians such as Thomas Aquinas belong. See The Grip of Gravity: The Quest to Understand the Laws of Motion and Gravitation for a good book-length treatment of this. Andrew (talk) 07:33, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's a synthesis of three primary sources, two of which are simply talking about natural law being providential and the third being pretty much opaque in its lack of context. I would not interpret any of the three as a "religious explanation of gravity" but in any case no authoritative interpreter has been cited at all. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a historian of scientific thought would deem the whole notion an invalid concept. Mangoe (talk) 15:56, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think merge/redirect to history of gravitational theory makes sense.

That it's synthesis in the way WP:NOR defines it isn't so clear [to me], but it's certainly a notability issue. (Notability concerns the subject of the article, so "religious explanations of gravity," not the individual examples an editor brought together.) It sounds like Andrew Davidson knows of such sources, but taking God and Nature for granted, that's still only one. Also, I fail to see any connection at all to the God particle. I'm also not sure (as a separate question) why it's "religious" and not "Christian?" Either "religious" or "Christian" makes it sound like these are views commonly held by adherents broadly rather than certain individuals. Even if we decide this subject is notable, that doesn't necessarily mean it should have its own article apart from history of gravitational theory. --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 19:43, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Newton is at the heart of this topic because of his law of universal gravitation. He was a Christian and had quite significant views about the part that God played in this. There are numerous sources which discuss the matter in detail. See, for more examples, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives or “Pray Do Not Ascribe That Notion to Me”: God and Newton’s Gravity. Andrew (talk) 20:36, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The problem in all of this is that any Christian holds that the natural order as a whole is providential. It's not specifically something about gravity. I'm not adverse to talking about the connection between Newton's religious views and his scientific endeavours, but there are other places for that, and this topic isn't a real topic. Mangoe (talk) 20:52, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gravity was an especially difficult phenomenon to understand because, as Newton explained, it involves action-at-a-distance. The sources I have cited indicate that Newton thought that this mysterious force was not an inherent property of matter but was the active agency of God, keeping the planets in their courses. As cited above, this was seen as evidence for the existence of God and so became a commonplace debating point. The debate has moved on now that we have more modern theories such as the Higgs field but notability does not expire as we document the history of the matter. Andrew (talk) 22:45, 4 April 2014 (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.