Talk:List of people who have been considered deities/Archive 4

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Hassan-i-Sabah,

He claimed he was God and he is perhaps the most infamous person to do so. Shouldn't the head of the hashashins be on this list? He did claim to bring people into paradise and to reanimate heads? Also his followers followed his orders into death. 63.226.180.162 23:07, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I tried to set up his table but I don't really know how that works. 63.226.180.162 04:27, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

There I set it up properly. 63.226.180.162 02:37, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Robert Mugabe

Didn't President Mugabe claim he was god recently?

Qwasty 18:11, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. In fact in this news article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/5117460.stm, he is stated as being a catholic and he meets with church leaders. Dictator? Yes. Claims to be god incarnate? No. 63.226.180.162 02:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

the Emperor Claudius

According to Graves, he was deified in Britain and a small temple built, hence the title of the second volume of I, Claudius: Claudius the God. I assume Graves didn't make that up. Can someone provide the historical reference? -- Hugh7 09:11, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Vespasian mentioned it in his autobiography. (He was in Britain with the military at the time.) The story goes that Claudius built the temple himself in 43 AD and had it dedicated to himself as God. I don't know if Vespasian's autobiography survived, but there are mentions of it in Dio Cassius and in (IIRC) Bede. --70.72.19.133 05:51, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Ayah Pin

Was going to add Ayah Pin into the list, but I'm not too clear what references I would need to include in the page. It's stated rather clearly on his Wikipedia page... is there more that needs to be done? --T-Boy 05:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I am hostelling in Europe at the moment. Some time after I get back, probably within a months time, I would be able to validate it if nothing happens before then. I typically check Google Print first. If the citation format is too much just leave a link to it. Cheers --Alterego 16:36, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Um, well, I added it. Only extant quote I've seen so far is in Malay. If you need any help with it being translated... 'Pie in the sky' by Danny Lim and Tong Yee Siong--T-Boy
I reverted the change for now. The problem is that his user page just says "He claims to be a god" or some such. A translation into english would be great. Also, entries go in alphabetical order. Please take care with these things. We definitely need a citation for every entry, and since this is the english Wikipedia it must be in the english language. --Alterego 15:23, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
Noted, and thanks. Must the translation be done by someone else, or can some Wikipedian work on it?--T-Boy 00:50, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm the one who wrote most of his wiki's. The first link on the Sky Kingdom page gives most of my sources, which are mainly articles from Malaysian newspapers. While they're not always reliable on anything religious with too much nuance in it (a few years ago they warned of a new wave of Malaysian Satanism, when what they really meant was some Malaysians were getting into black metal rock music) their stories seem to mesh on this point. However, the question of Ayah Pin's basic claim is still hard to figure out (at least for me), since he also claims to be able to CONTACT God. Contradiction or not? Hell, I don't know. Anyway he's on the run right now, and unavailable for comment. More news expected Sept. 1, when the trials of his followers begins. Hope this helps. Dawud 11:14, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Suma Ching Hai

Suma Ching Hai does not seem to fit the new criteria. --ZappaZ 22:52, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

That's nice.. Care to tell us why? --Alterego 02:43, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
'Course. Read below. Same argument. Does not fit the agreed criteria. Show me a cite with an unambiguous statement of being a god or God by this person and this person can stay. --ZappaZ 05:15, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Zappaz I would ask that you recognize the large amount of validation work that has gone into this article, and present with your complaints clear illustrations - preferably in the form of quotes - that make it understandable in the words of the subjects themselves - why they do not belong. That way, if your complaint is valid we can all see it for ourselves, and we have a conversation to point to when a future person comes along with similar questions. --Alterego 19:03, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
Here's what would help the most: You see the quotes surrounding Suma Ching Hai are not primary sources, and you think they should be. So you put her name on the todo list with a comment along those lines. You then commit yourself to validating - or invalidifying - her place in the article. I've done this so many times by now, very effectively too, that you can just look at some of my old posts that received no replies, where I explained why someone should be added or taken away. As it is you just whine here and expect me to do all the hard work in an effective way. --Alterego 19:14, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

From her website:

  • Be still and know that I am God. Who is that "I am"? That is the "one" that resides within us. That is the true "self". Therefore, we are God. This realization doesn't come through hearing people saying that or through believing alone, but through self realization. Just as in any other science there must be a special technique.[1]
  • I chant the holy names and I worship God, but that doesn't involve the concept "I am God". You need another method to reach the state of "I am God". Actually, it is not really a method. Rather, it is a lineage, an invisible force, the transmission of which can only be possible from a person who has attained Mastership, or a disciple authorized by this Master.[2]
  • We don't know God, because we are God, so we have to be "un-Godlike." We chose to come here to be different from God, so that we can have a look and compare and know that we are God.
  • I said "If I am God, how come I am so humble? How come I'm so weak? How come I'm so small? How come I'm so ignorant? How come I suffer so much? Where is my Home?" And that's when we begin to ask ourselves how to reclaim our glory again. That's when enlightenment begins to inch toward us, or we're crawling toward enlightenment, or maybe we're running, flying, it depends. Some people fly, some people walk, some people go by, maybe train. That's why at the time of so-called initiation, some people have greater enlightenment, some people have lesser "great" enlightenment. It's because sometimes we choose to go faster, sometimes we choose to go slower.
What is this research supposed to be? I am not a follower of Ching Hai, but none of the statements made above point to her as a person. She points to an inner Divinity common to all. This is general Advaita Vedanta, which claims Aham Brahmasmi This is more about theistic views vs. pantheistic ones. So you should they List of people who have said that they are gods in a pantheistic sense -- Mizar 17:56, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
We don't do research here, just validation. I didn't paste these quotes to show or not show that she belonged, just so that we could better understand Suma. The article is meant to capture anyone who said they are a god in any sense, theistic or pantheistic or xtheistic. --Alterego 22:58, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Meher Baba

Meher Baba I would like to know if there are any objections to the inclusion of Meher Baba to this list? If no, I will go ahead and make the edit. Thank you. Hamster Sandwich 23:52, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

No objections per se, but could you find primary quotes and add them, along with a citation for them, to his wikiquote page? If he's written a book on the subject we'll certainly need a good quote to justify him being here. Seems a solid entry otherwise. --Alterego 09:01, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
Well there is this [3] I don't know about reading all 40 volumes, but the first page gives a pretty good idea that Baba thought of himself as an avatar and manifestation of a diety. He seems to have attracted a following during and after his lifetime. I'm going to make the addition and welcome further discussion here. Thanks for the advice! Hamster Sandwich 01:07, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Like I said, you need to provide a quote before he can go in the article. --Alterego 07:42, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

The quote that's now serving as justification reference doesn't seem right:

"These false answers — such as, I am stone, I am bird, I am animal, I am man, I am woman, I am great, I am small — are, in turn, received, tested and discarded until the Question arrives at the right and Final Answer, I AM GOD."

I checked the page linked to; the context makes it pretty clear that "I" here does not refer to the writer (who probably doesn't think he is a woman, a stone or a bird either) but to the addressed reader ("There is only one question. And once you know the answer to that question there are no more to ask.") This doesn't quite qualify as a self-proclamation of deityhood, only to a general philosophy—the quote seems to illustrate he expects everyone to declare themselves God, which rather seems to be a form of pantheism. I haven't taken out the entry because editing these tables is a major pain in the ass, so I'm hoping I'm wrong. :-P Reading his article there does seem to be some potential, but the quote doesn't convince me. JRM · Talk 01:16, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Suma Ching Hai seems similar to me. Some of the quotes, when viewed in isolation, make the declaration clear. But you can also see that they have a broader philosophy that simply includes any and everyone. In general my attitude towards this is to list them and explain that their philosophy did not apply to them only, but that anyone could attain godhood, or was a god. The "I" should be thought of as a more inclusive I. Not only I am god, but you are god too. I think those philosophies definitely have room here in the article. Perhaps a small marking (∞) can be used to denote a more inclusive statement. --Alterego 21:31, August 22, 2005 (UTC)


List of people who claim to be Jesus Christ

These should go through the regular validation/invalidation procss of course. Just making sure they get documented. Added to the todo list as well. --Alterego 23:02, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Inri Cristo

  • Organizer of the Eclectic Movement for Inri Cristo and Consolidation of the Kingdom of God Over the Earth who claims to be the reincarnation of Jesus in Brazil. --Alterego 23:02, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Luc Jouret

Maitreya

  • The expected world teacher who is promoted by the British author Benjamin Creme. --Alterego 23:03, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Michael Travesser

  • Leader of the religious cult Strong City who claims to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. --Alterego 23:02, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Vince Taylor

  • Musician --Alterego 23:02, August 23, 2005 (UTC)



How about Mita?

That is, Juanita García Peraza, founder of the Mita Congregation based in Puerto Rico. Working in a Christian framework, she claimed to be "the living incarnation of the Holy Spirit", that is, "God the Mother," whose revealed name is "Mita." (See [4].) Her successor, known as Aarón, claims to be the current incarnation of God-the-Mother. I don't have direct quotations from them saying "I am a god" or "I am God" but it seems very clear from the article I cite. FreplySpang (talk) 14:47, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

I have placed Juanita García Peraza on the todo list. Now that we have so many people interested in this place, hopefully someone besides me can start hacking on it :) I have been keeping very good track of the status of anyone who is unresolved. --Alterego 17:51, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! I didn't mean to imply that you should do all the work on Mita. But I did want to make sure that she was theologically appropriate (the difference between an God and an incarnation of God is a bit too subtle for me!), and besides, the page is protected so I can't add her now anyway. :) FreplySpang (talk) 22:25, September 3, 2005 (UTC)


Jesus again

OK, maybe this is foolishly optimistic. But some of the above is long and hard to follow. Could we get people to give reasons to include or not include Jesus, without discussion of other things?

I'll give a reason to include: KJV John 10:30-10:33: 30 I and my Father are one. 31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? 33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. full text of John 10.

To me, this indicates that his remarks were considered blasphemous at the time, as the Jews listening assuming he was saying he was God. I think at long as there's reasonable support for Jesus claiming to be god, he should be included even if that support is questioned. Controversies can easily be mentioned in the explanatory text, as was the case with Jesus. Friday (talk) 16:20, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Read John 10:34-10:35 "Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are agods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;" in which Jesus rebuts them quite clearly. ≈ jossi ≈ 16:42, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Outside view

I have only been involved in contributing to this article in th most cursory way (inclusion of Meher Baba, some suggestions concerning prose and style) but after the bulk of the disscussion I have read here today, I thought I should comment, if only that a clearer consensus may be reached. This list is lacking in both content and style. For instance, to mention the Egyptian pharoahs and neglect say Inca, Mayan, Toltec and Aztec kings and rulers is an oversight. Fine, that can be addressed by inclusion. The crux of the current debate is the inclusion of Jesus. In my opinion he should be included, with the codicil and comments that have heretofor been placed with his inclusion. A quote from a highly regarded source has been provided, that indicates Jesus belief that he was the son of God. It has been shown that he believed himself able to create a "miracle", indeed, raising the dead back to life. It has been shown that in the view of the early adherants of Christianity, they believed he was not talking about the his Father in a mortal sense, but in the spiritual and preternatural sense. The Council of Nicea codified this belief into the Trinitarian view that most Roman Catholics believe as an article of their faith. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the Gnostic churches view that Jesus was an eternal being, present at his Father's side in a "heavenly" dimension almost from the beginning of time. There will always be a great amount of subjectivity and heated debate surrounding an issue as "prickly" as this one is, but lets face it, gentle editors, this article is unlikely to be deleted and it behooves all parties to acceed to the demands of consensus. From my point of view, Jesus is as likely a candidate for inclusion here as anybody on the list. I don't have any other opinion on this subject, other than to say, editing this artcile seems to bring out the worst aspects in people, and situation I find more than a little ironic. Good luck. Hamster Sandwich 16:54, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I think that there is a misunderstanding of the dispute in your comment above. The dispute is centered around the criteria for inclusion and the title of this article. If the article title remains List of people who have said that they are gods and the criteria remains "The list of people who have said that they are gods consists of those notable human beings who have made statements about being a god or being God.", the inclusion of Jesus (and others who claim/claimed they are Jesus) will always be in dispute. If, on the other hand, we change the title to e.g. List of people declaring divine origin and if we change the criteria accordingly, then the dispute will dissipate as it will become obvious who should be included and who shouldn't. ≈ jossi ≈ 17:19, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
If we tossed the word "are believed to" into the criteria, would that do it for you? Hipocrite 18:40, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

List of people declaring divine origin consensus gathering

User ≈ jossi ≈ has suggested a name change.

  • I can't see a problem with such a change. It will go far to solve the ambiguity problems associated with the article as it now stands. Support fully. Hamster Sandwich 17:24, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  • That sounds like a reasonably good new title to me. android79 17:25, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • A clear purpose and scope of the article would be most helpful. Count me as a supporter as well. Friday (talk) 17:26, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Support - List of people declaring divine origin is a fair solution that should satisfy the original intent of the article, serve the purpose of documenting something, and to sooth the savage beast of WP:Conflict. - CHAIRBOY 17:28, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd support that.--Scimitar parley 17:28, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd support that, but I'd support Divine status more, unless that causes Jesus conflict. Sons of gods have divine status, right?Hipocrite 17:36, 1 September 2005 (UTC)Oppose Convinced per Alterego that Divine isn't the best choice of word.Hipocrite 18:07, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, and so do a whole ton of kings and popes. Read my posting below and the article on the Divine Right of Kings. The word Divine is absolutely ambiguous and unsuitable for this article. --Alterego 17:59, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
cosider him a demigod, and i think it would work.Gavin the Chosen 17:37, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. I prefer divine origin to divine status, except I wonder whether Jesus himself actually ever claimed either, and whether we might be left with the same objections, but I won't quibble. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:42, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Notwithstanding Alterego's comment below about past discussion, I am glad all of you have decided to assist with this dispute by providing useful insights. Thanks. Regarding the comment about a "ton of Kings and Popes", that would not be a problem, these can be added as well. With the new title, Jesus will fit, as he declared unequivocally to be of divine origin (i.e. stating that God was his Father)--ZappaZ 19:20, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  • HIGHLIGHTING ABOVE - Adding a million kings and popes to the list does not serve to help it's purpose. Hipocrite - «Talk» 13:46, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
If the article "List of people declaring divine origin" is created, based on the content of this list, which is a list of people who have said that they are gods, and for which I have presented a logical argument to which has not been rebutted whatsoever, but instead agreed with, and you include every person, including every single king who has ever existed and had divine right, I will be forced to recreate this List of people who have said that they are gods, because it is very clearly and obviously not the same list. If my comment below is only greeted with acceptance - which is the case - then regardless of any vote with the word divine in the title, the article cannot be moved because the word divine is unsatisfactory and specifies another criteria wholly. Let me say this very clearly: Regardless of a vote, a logical argument has been presented, which not only not in whole, but not even not in part, has been rebutted. --Alterego 21:28, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Are you saying that you reject the contributions and attempts to reach consensus made by all these editors, and that your position is unmovable? My understanding of WP editing is that it is a collaborative process based on consensus, not on unilateralism based on a claim of perceived lack of "a logical argument rebuttal". Consensus: A mutually acceptable agreement that takes into consideration the interests of all concerned parties. An agreement reached through consensus may not satisfy each participant’s interests equally or receive a similar level of support from all participants. Read also Consensus. ≈ jossi ≈ 23:38, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
I keep a very close eye on this article and this vote was started before I ever had the chance to present an argument regarding this title. This means There was no discussion regarding its wording or its merit in general. It also means that past discussions regarding the wording of titles similar to this one were rejected without explanation. --Alterego 00:20, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
The Wikipedia:Consensus guideline is also a good read (probably), and I encourage all participants to familliarize themselevs with it. I especially caution against confusing it with majority — at worse, consensus translates into a supermajority. OK, I'm done rambling.El_C 00:04, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
A survey was conducted before there was any discussion. I don't think there is any room whatsoever for a rebuttal of my rejection of the word divine in the title below, yet I was not given an opportunity to present it before the vote. Therefore it is invalid because there is no way it can possibly attempt to calculate consensus. --Alterego 00:23, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
A survey was conducted as part of an attempt to reach consensus on the dispute. Seems to me that so far, there is consensus to proceed as proposed, but I would expect that additional editors will cast their votes to support or oppose the proposal. Current voters may chose to respond to your last concern about the term "divine", or not. In fact, one editor already changed his vote based on your comments. You can also open an RfC to request more input from the community. No rush ... I do not see El_C unprotecting the article before there is a solid consensus. ≈ jossi ≈ 00:37, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
A vote does not constitue a discussion - or in the case of discordance - an argument. Let me use the words of the voting article to make this more clear: "Voting is a method of decision making wherein a group such as a meeting or an electorate attempts to gauge its opinion—usually as a final step following discussions or debates." --Alterego 00:43, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

"List of people declaring divine origin consensus gathering" is fallacious

  • I wish people would read the archives, especially past discussions relating to the title, before making far-reaching statements. First of all, this is not an article about people of "divine origin". Where someone originated has absolutely nothing to do with this article. This is an article with the aim of making a list of everyone who has said that they are a god. We don't care if they are of divine origin - whatever that is supposed to mean. The word divine is extremely ambiguous anyway, and I have gone into it before. Please read the archives. The following is available in a section aptly titled Article Name. As I have said countless times, discussions of the title have gone on for some time and it has already been agreed that the words 'claim' and 'divine' will not be in it. I have also recently argued (it's available on this page so you won't have to click) and presented evidence showing "self-x" is a term used almost exclusively by skeptics and naysayers. Second of all, the responses to the below post were extremely acceptive, including Zappaz.--Alterego 17:38, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Resorting to a past argument which was not successful in swaying opinion as a reason to move the title is unsatisfactory. If you will recall, (or read the edit history if you don't recall), the page was violently moved before any point was agreed upon and an unvested third party came and reverted it back. They pointed out that if lack of clarity were a problem, the title the page had been moved to did not fix it.
I commend you on your drive to create a category of those who have claimed to be divine. This article, however, is not about people who have claimed to be divine.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the first recorded uses of the word Deity occurred in 1374 and was written by Chaucer: "But o {th}ow Ioue..Is {th}is an honour to {th}i deite," meaning "The estate or rank of a god; godhood; the personality of a god; godship; esp. with poss. pron Only slightly earlier, in 1372 it was used by William Langland: " {Th}us {th}ei drauelen on heore deys {th}e Deite to knowe.," meaning "The divine quality, character, or nature of God; Godhood, divinity; the divine nature and attributes, the Godhead."
Clearly at this point in time, the word divine was used to describe the character of God (as "He" pertained to Christians) and his nature, but not him specifically. Not him, but qualities and features of him.
The word Divine was used, again by Chaucer, in 1386: "By precept of the Messager diuyn," meaning "Given by or proceeding from God; having the sanction of or inspired by God." There are the notes, " divine right, a right conferred by or based on the ordinance or appointment of God. Divine right of kings, that claimed according to the doctrine that (legitimate) kings derive their power from God alone, unlimited by any rights on the part of their subjects. In English History, the phrase came into specific use in the 17th c., when the claim was prominently made for the Stuart kings."
It is apparant that in it's early usage, to be divine did not mean to literally be God, but to merely have characteristics of him or to be or to have something projected straight from him. The nuance between being him, and being something related to him is important and very relevant here.
According to the prescriptions of Webster's Dictionary, the primary usage of the word divine in contemporary usage is ": of, relating to, or proceeding directly from God or a god". Note that it does not say, in the primary sense, that it is to be God or a god, but rather to relate to them or proceed directly from them. It is something wholly apart. I myself can say that I am divine. It does not mean that I am proclaiming myself to be a deity to be worshipped, but rather that I proceed directly from god or God. A very ambiguous claim, and likely not meant to be interpreted in the strong sense required for inclusion in this article.
Webster further states that the primary meaning of the word deity in contemporary usage is in line with it's original usage: "The rank or essential nature of a god". I think it is apparant after reading this that the word deity and divine are not synonymous. To be divine and To be a deity do not carry the same meaning.
Aside from that, even if they were precisely synonymous, what would cause you to prefer one over the other? The only reason would be to stir things up unnecessarily.
Any typos are apologetic (not in that sense =),--Alterego 00:38, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
Interestng points. I hadn't mentioned the May conversation to foreclose a new conversation, only to indicate that I also agreed last time this was discussed. Words aside, what do we want the article to be about? People who think they are god? god-like? messianic? supernaturally gifted? -Willmcw 03:40, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
Alterego, from a factual perspective there is nothing wrong with the current title (nor with the contents, possible exception is Moon) but the tone of of the expression "self-proclaimed deity" is too strong for the people who are included. Andries 10:32, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Having established that being a deity and being divine are not the same thing, if this article title is changed to be less contrary, others need to be changed as well. Specifically, List of avatar-claimants, and any title regarding a status that someone supposedly had, according to themselves, and where the title leaves any semblance of doubt that they may have not actually had it, but only claimed to. I could agree that it would be more towards neutral.
List of deities does not make a distinction between figures verified as deities or otherwise. Perhaps it should simply be 'List of deities manifested as human or somesuch. Any recognition that they are not actually what they say to be, is, after all, only an unprovable point of view, and saying that someone merely claimed to be something which most people would find absurd and impossible does not carry the tone of being simply unknown or unverified. --Alterego 14:31, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks Alterego for a excellent backgrounder ondeity and divine. I would agree with you about the title List of deities manifested as human, if we include a disclaimer in the article's intro along the lines of of what you wrote above. --Zappaz 2 July 2005 11:31 (UTC)
I imagine somewhere down the line there would be an argument as to whether or not "deities manifested as human" includes deities who were not necessarily human beings, or even contested (historicity) as human beings (out of a story for instance), so we might want to deal with that now. I personally would like to start hacking on the list of names above, and also finding academic citations for all the names in the todo list before another major change is done to the article. An immediate article title move is going to incite a lot of discussion and we have a lot of unresolved things that have to be worked on already. --Alterego July 4, 2005 00:18 (UTC)
I think that "deitied manifested as human" violates WP:NPOV as it implies that they were, in fact, deities. A thought. - CHAIRBOY 18:24, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
The List of deities makes the common sense assumption that the reader understands they may not have actually been a god. I think we should do the same. When I think about it, it seems as if making it very clear that they might not have been a god is actually where the pov lies. Perhaps the best thing we can do is say "this is a list of human gods." "Why are they gods? Because they said so and we are not in a position to say that they really aren't." That seems very npov to me. --Alterego 18:29, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Discussions and debates regarding the corollary titles "List of human deities" and "List of fictional human deities"

I would like to present two corollary candidates for the title of this article: "List of human deities" and "List of fictional human deities". For clarity - it should be noted that there has been no back-and-forth discussion regarding these titles in the past. My position is that the List of deities and List of fictional deities make the assumption that the reader understands that a given subject may not actually be a god - that is, it might just be that people thought they were a god. Likewise, with a list of human deities, it could be the fact that a significant number of people merely thought they were a god, or that they themselves thought they were a god. Clearly, with the list of deities there is no perception that the encyclopedia endorses the view that the subjects actually are deities. It is left up to the good common sense of the reader, and in fact achieves npov by doing so. The same standard should be used on these corollary child lists. These two lists would further be complementary to the List of deities, such that anyone on the two corollary lists could also be found on the parent list, but not vice versa. The List of fictional deities would cover demigods, and other godmen of notability who are the protagonists of myths and stories. A change to this title would not constitute grounds for the mass removal of subjects as per any one person's position regarding them, but would rather occur on a one by basis utilizing concensus, evidence, primary quotes, and careful reasoning and debate as has traditionally been done here. --Alterego 01:03, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

With respect, I suspect this would cause much animosity. People who hold strong religious beliefs may take offense at seeing a 'competing' deity listed next to the one they worship. The List of people who have said that they are gods isn't perfect, but it definately provides a conduit that grounds against much of this. The one being discussed above this section goes further, in my opinion, towards that goal of being clinically detached yet straight forward enough to be helpful. As I mentioned earlier, that List of human deities is POV and assumes too much(in response to your assertion that readers would interpret it the way you posited). When I saw the list, 'I' did not read it the way you said people would, and I believe myself to be a pretty reasonable guy. 'List of fictional human deities' is an almost guaranteed religious war, and I recommend against it. - CHAIRBOY 01:34, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
A feature of the title "List of human deities" would be that entries such as Jesus or Krishna are no longer of debate. This is because we attribute the fact that they are a deity to Christians, or whomever the followers are. It is a fact that to Christians, Jesus is a deity. Therefore he would belong on a list of human deities. His historicity is unimportant because he is believed by them to be both a human and a deity. Jesus would not belong on the List of fictional human deities, because the group to which he is a deity does not believe he is fictional. This is really just the same reasoning that allows Jesus to be listed on the List of deities. I hope I made this clear. Although one-by-one discussions would be necessary, the only additional criteria an entry would need on this list in addition to belonging on the "List of deities" is that those to whom they are considered a deity (even if it is themself) also consider them to have been human. This significantly reduces many of our current problems. I believe it is a mistake to attribute our current issues with this article to a "List of human deities", as we are effectively piggy-backing on the common sense notion of an already existing and undisputed article. --Alterego 01:44, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
For illustration, I created a prototype List of human deities. Note that I was able to use most of the existing description for the List of deities. Also note that the tone of the descriptions would change, as it would no longer be a stringent requirement that they actually said they were deities, so long as they are a deity to some culture. If they are not, then we need a level of verifiability which proves they were a deity at least to themselves. --Alterego 01:58, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree with Chairboy and his comments re. the potential perception of some of Alteregos suggestions. "List of people commonly identified as dieties" would be inclusive of Jesus and Krishna particularily. It would encompass pharoahs, Incas, avatars and whatever else springs readily to mind. I will take this space to commend each and every editor who has been working towards a goal of common good here. I am at this point extremely impressed by the dialogue and hard work that all of you have been engaged in the past few hours concerning this issue. Heres hoping to a continuation of same! Hamster Sandwich 02:03, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
I think a problem with that title is that it may exclude some of the more interesting entries, such as Charles Manson. He really isn't commonly considered a deity - but he did say he is Jesus. Somewhere above I said I didn't mind "List of people considered to be deities", and while I find it to be less pure than List of human deities, I guess I could still get behind it. --Alterego 02:23, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • "List of people identified as dieties or of divine origin'? Hamster Sandwich 03:16, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
What is the need for the phrase "divine origin"? What does it mean? --Alterego 15:55, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
Presumably, it means 'created by a divine being' or 'being divine'. A person of french origin is french, for example. Through the property of transference, the object becomes 'divine' as well. Additionally, I wish to agree with Jossi's comments below regarding your 'reset' of the conversation. I request that your role be equal to other editors, and that you not assume 'control' of the conversation. Wikipedia offers tools for all of us to come to consensus, and I feel you may be using these tools to the detriment of respectful discussion. - CHAIRBOY 16:07, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
If editors are not willing to address my arguments in debate, then there should be no vote here. There should be no phase of simply jumping to a vote in the first place before discussion has happened. If you are not willing to address my arguments directly, and instead talk about them only in meta-argumentation, then you cannot expect progress to be made. I have explained very clearly and with citations such as the Oxford English Dictionary why the word divine is innapropriate for the title. I have seen no contestation of this point - yet still it is persisted that it be used. If you cannot contest the point then the word cannot be used. You can "request my role be equal to other editors", and I certainly appreciate you doing so. That means that other editors will need to address each point in my argument on a one by one basis - just as I do with them. If you scroll up, you will see a recurring pattern of someone proposing an idea, and me asking for further clarification, and the discussion ending at that point. I am now asking for the merit of the phrase "divine origin" to be sought out, as it is loaded with meaning that, aside from my explanation of why divine is inappropriate, has not been discussed. Your argument that "a person of french origin is french" is fallacious. If a person of divine origin is divine, what does that mean? If I say I am divine, am I saying that I am god? The answer is No. I made that case very clear - and it has been uncontested. If you wish to continue arguing about argumentation, that is fine, I will gladly do so. Instead, I would prefer you stick to the facts of the case. --Alterego 16:35, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
What is interesting to me is to witness the ability of Alterego to dimiss input from other editors, and reset a conversation with disregard of that input. I have followed the discussions in the archives, and this pattern repeats itself. I find this quite disconcerting. At this point, and given the lack of consideration demonstrated, I am no longer interested in contributing to the resolution of this dispute. I leave this in the capable hands of SlimVirgin, EL C, Hamster Sandwich and other experienced editors like them. ≈ jossi ≈ 03:44, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

I would kindly request from El C and other admins, to keep the article protected until such a time in which there is a sincere openeness by Alterego to accept and incorporate other editor's input, ideas and comments. When that happens, please post a message on my Talk page. --ZappaZ 22:45, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

"Sincere openness"? By that, I assume you expect me to put a template on the article explaining there is discussion going on the talk page, and then leave for several days while the discussion goes on. Then, when I come back I will implement my own point of view arbitrality and call it "neutral" (if this sounds familiar, this is what you did which encited the argument leading up to the lock). Is that what you mean by sincere openness? I'm not here to be a "sincerely open editor" - I am here to edit rationally and debate the facts. If you are not willing to back up the changes you wish to be made to the article with citations and logical arguments, then 1) your idea is not ready to be implemented and 2) you are not willing to put in the work necessary. If, by "sincerely open" you mean, willing to debate with any editor on the merit of their idea, then yes, I am sincerely open. --Alterego 00:01, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

List of x discussions

I hope everyone's enjoyed a nice break..=) A cursory glance using find reveals the following titles. I've sorted them according to my own bias, with any containing 'claim', 'divine', or 'self-x' receiving the boot. I think there are some good suggestions that don't use these words, and the examples I gave in each situation have not themselves been contested. The current title, as near as I can tell, has no pov disputes attached to it, and is disliked principally because it is wordy. For that reason, I also gave the boot to longer titles. What is a concise way to say that a being was both human and a god, and not imply that they only might have been, and also not imply that they were crazy. How to go about this without giving the tone of this article, which has already attracted members from a diversity of religious groups, an incendiary tone which encourages insertion of pov (often against, but often for)? How to further go about it while being inclusive of our very interesting subject matter, and not offending anyone's sensibilities? I've taken somewhat of a purist position - we should model the List of deities and simply add the adjective of human to the noun deity. I believe this creates a noun phrase. I find it to be a simple and elegant solution in line with things that we already do. But I have commented throughout our discussion when another title was, in my view, another route to go. So I am also willing to go in what I see to be a less pure route. But if it has any smidgen of pov, I will be off the boat.

Use claim, divine, self-x...:

  • List of self-proclaimed deities
  • List of people declaring divine origin
  • List of people of divine origin
  • List of people who have claimed to be God
  • List of people who have claimed to be divine
  • List of self-identified deities
  • List of people claiming divine origin
  • List of people identified as dieties or of divine origin
  • List of alleged self-proclaimed deities

Too long:

  • List of people that others believe that they say they are gods
  • List of people regarded or who self-identified as gods
  • List of people who are believed to have said they are gods?

Wrong capitalization of god(s)

  • List of people that others believe them to be God
  • List of people believed to be a God

Misuse of Singular they

  • List of people who have said they are a god

Sure why not...

  • List of people who have said that they are gods (a bit wordy...)
  • List of human deities (my preference)
  • List of people believed to be deities (why not? believed by themselves or someone else...using the most common sense notion of believe)
  • List of deities manifested as human (hmm..seems to imply every deity has the characteristic of manifesting here from somewhere else...)
  • List of human gods (prefer deities more)
  • List of people identified as deities (why not? identified by themselves or someone else seems implied)
  • List of people commonly identified as dieties (dislike because of 'commonly', e.g., it excludes folks who were their only believer)

Sorry if I missed anyone's title. More could probably be dug out of old archives but this seemed pretty well represented. --Alterego 22:36, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

I have said my POV below, but of the above list I would prefer:
  • List of alleged human deities
It's shorter than the one you have now, it doesn't assume there are human deities, so alledged is a good compromise. --Mizar 17:46, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
There are three other lists that use the word alleged:
define:alleged on Google captures some tones i'm not too fond of. e.g., alleged(a): doubtful or suspect; "these so-called experts are no help" , the word "alleged" is used to describe both the accused person and the crime of which he has been accused, Questionably true or asserted to be true.
I will have to do a cursory check for its grammatical correctness, but I believe List of stated human deities is proper. --Alterego 01:12, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Well whaddy'a know...I went to Google to define:deity and it points me to our deity article that says, among other things, "A deity [...] is a postulated supernatural entity". So why not List of postulated human deities? --Alterego 01:25, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm german, so I am not too good with meanings of english words. The two suggestions you made sound good to me, better than the one you have now. -- mizar ॐ Talk 10:43, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Alterego, you forgot to add to the list that "List of people declaring divine origin", as proposed by jossi, was supported by a group of editors. --ZappaZ 21:48, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Since you put a template on the article saying there was discussion happening, and then left without joining the discussion, only to come back and implement your point of view (without discussing it), you must have missed the following conversation where I showed why the word divine is inappropriate for the title - a point that has never been rebutted. --Alterego 22:46, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
btw: Thanks Alterego for a excellent backgrounder ondeity and divine. I would agree with you about the title List of deities manifested as human, if we include a disclaimer in the article's intro along the lines of of what you wrote above. --Zappaz 2 July 2005 11:31 (UTC)
The discussion you refer to was regarding "List of deities manifested as human". Now we are discussion a title that implies "divine origin" and not "divinity" per se, two very different distinctions. As for the lack of rebuttal, I would suggest that you check with some of the editors that voted for that title. My assessment is that they have given up participating due to what I would consider too strong "pride of authorship" on your part. I am mistaken to assess that you have failed to include any input given by editors unless that input was aligned with your arguments? I will tell you what: If you want, I will stop editing this article, and I will stop contributing to the discussion as well so you can add me to the List of people that were scared off by Alterego :). The decision is in your hands. --ZappaZ 22:53, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Nobody has discussed what "divine origin" means. Are all Christians essentially of divine origin? What about all cockroaches as seen by Buddhist monks? Our list is going to get pretty long. I made a clear distinction between "deity" and "divine". I don't see a distinction between "diving origin" and "divinity" in yours. Divinity is "of or proceeding from god". "Divine origin" is "originating or proceeding from god". These sound the exact same to me, and if they are nuanced it is not relevant to the article here. --Alterego 23:05, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Why this page anyway? Viewing the cultural background.

I think that when you make a declaration: 'List of people who said they are God', you leave off any definition what God to these people who think this way means. This becomes very obvious when you compare the cultural context, in which these persons appear. Let s say, for a Hindu, to speak of someone being an Avatar is nothing really farfetched, indeed, in Advaita Vedanta, everything, everyone is declared to be Brahman, God anyway, only most people aren't aware of this Divinity inside, while others are, and they are looked upon God-realized in those countries. It may be said that a claim on Avatarship is more than this sense that All is God, indeed it is, but it has to be viewed against the cultural background, where this is seen as the ultimate Truth, whereas in the Dualistic religions of the West, it is simply a blasphemy, and that's how the title sounds. We are all Gods, thats my opinion, so please include me in the list, or better abondon such a list, and view the respective people within their cultural background, lets say as 'Avatars' or whatever. It makes a big difference, for example, if somone says,he is the only God, either ever, like the Christians believe of Christ, or even now, or if you think there are many Avatars on earth, even right now, even working hidden, like Mother Meera states. In this case they are moer like divine messengers doing a certain work on earth. In any case I smell a certain bias in the whole title of it and the way its put together. IMHO people should be put into categories not unrespected of the cultural context such a declaration appears. Thats also the reason I put the link off the article, because I think its deceptive.I would the suggest, since you probably want to keep the list, to put the links to it, not on the individual pages of the persons concerned, because in the way you phrase it,it sounds like you put people on some kind of pillory, but rather connect it to, let's say an Avatar page. In the individaul article will be a link to an Avatar page anyway. Still I think, this whole kind of undertaking is biased.-- Mizar

The key difference, I suspect, is the concept of notability. To make this list, the person must be notable. Second, this is a list of people who claimed they themselves were divine, so even in your example, assuming you were someone super famous, then it would be only you listed, not everyone in the world. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:14, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
My mainpoint though is not this, but that you leave out the cultural context, and any definition, what God may mean to those people.One may be an emporer, who demands that his every wish gets fulfilled, another one a mystic, who thinks that this realization is open to anybody, and who clearly accepts his/her human role. Seeing this in a western Christian culture, who views such things as plasphemious, gives the title especially a biased flavour. Keep it if you want, but don't insist to link it to each article. -- Mizar
I'm not sure I understand, are you asking that references to non-western deities be de-wiki'd so there is not a link to them? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:51, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
No. Generally speaking, I don't like the list, because it puts things out of context. You have to consider the worldview against which a claim of godhead is being made. I'm not sure what you mean by 'de-wiki'd', but if you think you have to have this list for whatever reason, I don't mind if you link within the list to all the persons mentioned, but in the wiki of the person does not have to be a link to back this list, I think, because its controversial, and it may bring in a biased view. -- Mizar 18:07, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I apologize for my confusion, but I still do not understand what you mean when you argu that context is required. This is not an article, it is a list of people who have claimed to be gods of one sort or another. There should be no offense taken where none is intended. Best regards, CHAIRBOY (☎) 18:15, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, but I thought I was clear. Offense is not necessarily a matter of intention, but of the wording. Whenever you put a list together, you do provide a context, because you group things. And yet this context which you create, is ignorant of the culture in which a word appears. I have seen above, somone put statements together under the subject of Ching Hai, which are commenly expressive of an eastern world-view, which belives that God is in everyone. You can't ignore such a context. It's a pantheistic world view that everything is God, and in such a world-view e.g. a 'list of people who say they are God' doesn't make any sense. All is God in such a world-view, so a list doesn't make sense. It only makes sense in a world-view where not everyone is God, were such a claim has a certain degree of exclusivity. Got it? Somebody linked this list to the article in Mother Meera and I removed it there. Here I explained why -- Mizar 18:37, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Varied worldviews have absolutely been taken into account. I cited Osho's own autobiography as a reason to not include him, because he made it very clear that his definition of Bhagwan is amalgamated with cultural misunderstanding. From a potential editors perspective, the character of this list should be considered as both who is listed an who is not, and there are many folks who are not listed. David Icke, for example, later explained that he has a more eastern outlook on what it means to be the son of god. I said that I was a son of God..just as all of us are "sons" and "daughters" of God - all aspects of the greater whole. Indeed that we ARE the whole if only we realised it. So he is not listed. Suma Ching Hai has made some quite wild claims, and most certainly encourages her followers to worship her as a god. She is something above and apart from her following, whether or not she holds a more eastern concept. Often these human gods say that they have attained something that others can attain too - but only after hard work (very hard), as is often the case. If someone of notability says they are a human god, using any of the definitions on our page on the subject, probably we should have a discussion about listing them. (Removing and adding entries has historically happened on a one by one basis and only after discussions). --Alterego 01:01, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Right, but do I understand you correctly, that you do not insist this list to be linked dierectly to the wiki of the concerned persons? That yo do not make it some kind of a category or substitute thereof. E.G I prefer there is a link in the individual wiki to the concept of Avatars - which in this case provides the cultural background - and then make a link to your list there. -- mizar ॐ Talk 10:58, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Since you are a follower of Mother Meera it would be helpful to the article if you could explain the situation around her to us so there is better accuracy. Probably, if the current statement or one like it that we have about her is true, her article should mention it as well and link to this one within the text. --Alterego 13:51, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

What you wrote is actually on the wiki.(If that is so, why connect it here?) The footnote is a statement from the book, where MM identifies herself with her aspect of the Divine Mother. You should note that she does not make such statements as proclamations, but only answered the question of a devotee. MM clearly recognizes her own human aspect. She does not claim all-knowingness or omnipotency. In fact she sees herself only as one of several other Avatars on earth today. A recognition of her Avatarhood is irrelevant to her. It has no meaning for someone who has no experience of it. I have heard her say many times, that many Indian Gurus are being looked upon by their desciples as God, that this was normal, and she had obviously no objection to it. Therefore I think to publish such a link to this list on the site is irrelevant. There is already a link to Avatar, and it does put a wrong emphasis on the issue. -- mizar ॐ Talk 16:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Internal links are a good thing, that's why =) Of course it's interesting that Mother Meera does not believe she is Omniscient or Omnipotent, but you probably wouldn't expect a human deity to be those things anyway. On top of that, those are characteristics of the Christian God - not necessarily other gods (that's a bit left over from my Philosophy of Religion class;) Now, the topic of Avatar's has been discussed and I believe the current status is that more validation work is needed. However - it seems that it is walking a thin line to affirm the inquisitions of your disciples regarding your status of existence and for her to explicitly note that they worship her as a god (God?) and not object to it. Perhaps you could provide some quotes on her discussing the subject so we can have them documented and then choose based on them whether or not she has been explicit about her being a deity. It seems it could go either to from here. --Alterego 23:19, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
In this case, the internal link is to a pseudocategory, as I have explained below. Furthermore, alterego, with almost every word you say, you show to me, that my fera is justified: Also Hinduism views Godhead to be one, but in many forms, and that Godhead is allpowerfull, omniscient etc. Sorry, but your bias shows. I don't clearly understand - it seems that it is walking a thin line to affirm the inquisitions of your disciples regarding your status of existence and for her to explicitly note that they worship her as a god (God?) and not object to it. What does o affirm the inquisitions of your disciples mean? Is this a court, and we have to defend ourselves, and have to try to exemptify ourselves? Who gives you this status? In Indian thought, again, veneration of gurus are advices by the scriptures as a part of the process of awakening, and more stress is layed on the subjugation of the ego, than on individual self-exhibition. In the case of Mother Meera, this may give you a wrong idea, because she does not demand veneration or worship, but in her upbringing, she is part of Indian culture. Again you don't seem to have any appreciation of it.To see God in human beings is part of this culture, is deeply rooted in Hinduism, and it means of venerating the Divine in a personal human form, still seeing this person as having a human frame. It is similar to the bowing down of the zen monk to his seat before meditation, it is the appreciation of the Divinity inherent in every man. As I said, according to Advaita Vedanta, we are all GOD - AHAM BRAHMASMI. -- mizar ॐ Talk 11:25, 15 September 2005 (UTC)


Thanks, Mizar, for an excellent explanation of the problems with this list. I fully agree that we have an issue here of context and of the Western systemic bias of Wikipedia. I have listed this article on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias open tasks and on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias in religion to get some more editors involved. At this point and seeing the number of iterations this article has gone through, I do not see a way out of the dispute unless (a) the Western culture bias is resolved; (b) the article removes any POV connotations resulting from such bias; (c) a tight, unambiguous criteria for inclusion is found and agreed upon; and (d) a suitable article devoid of POV, innuendo, and implied bias, is found and agreed upon. --ZappaZ 17:07, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Zappaz I couldn't agree more with you. I am glad there is an awareness like the Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias in religion. I don't see the use of this list except in creating some kind of pseudo-category, putting all kinds of people together, from mystics to psychotic mass-murderers and dictators. I don't know how this could help to elucitate the phenomemnon or cultural environment for the people concerned. Above that I fear that no-body wants to be really part of this list, which speaks volumes in itself. Since this list attempty to be a kind of pseudo-category, especially when it wants to be linked from the individual wikis, it is clear that it is not a 'natural' category. There very wording of the list, together with the type of grouping, I feel is hostile to anybody having an grounding in eastern culture. It's a list similar to 'list of all cults' and other lists to discreditate non-christian thought. Again: the intersection between the Divine realm and the human is much wider in Vedantic thought than I the west, where there are clearcut distinctions, and calling oneself 'God' is regarded as plasphmy. In Indian thought, almost any guru is being regarded as 'God' or 'Avatar' by his followers. Thus the problem of the list will be, that it is not representative at all. I could name you immediately ten more indian teachers who are called Avatar and have a fair western following. This is encouraged by indian scriptures who say: Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwara (Guru Gita). The goal of indian spiritaulity is to realize ones basic identity with God, which the 4 great Mahavakhyas state: Aham Brahmasmi. It is in this sense that the Guru, or Mentor serves as a focal-point for this identity, in being identified with Divinity at first. Furthermore the concept of Avatarhood depends on reincarnation. A human being is reincarnated in a process of upward evolution, to finally merge with the Divine. If someone has already reached Divinity, he may still reincarnate, but this time not to work out his individual karma, but to help further the Divine Evolution for others, similarely to the concept of the Bodhisattva in Buddhism. In fact AC Bahsham, says in 'The wonder that was India' that the Avatar-concept comes from Buddhism, from the concept of reincarnating Buddhas. I also don't see why one should participate in the discussion, how to improve the list, when one thinks that the whole idea of the list is basically flawed. Therefore I don't agree with you, alterego, that zappaz withdrew from discussion. Our objection is still valid. In short: why create a pseudocategory for people who don't want to be on such a list. Also, alterego, the way you spoke about, why you would include Ching Hai, that even though the quotes of her, as I had pointed out, are generic in nature and are pure hindu philosophy, her 'weird' behaviour would qualify her for inclusion, shows, th basically negative idea you have of the list. Its putting people on a pillory, trying to brandmark them. I just hope that this attempt will be prevented -- mizar ॐ Talk 10:56, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Please do not make the mistake of extrapolating from specific entries to entire cultures, or you become as guilty as you say I am. "Dear Policeman, I am God. Do not tell the media about this.", "I am the one who created Adam and Eve. I made their bodies and their blood,” [...] “I still use human beings by speaking through them, like I spoke through Jesus Christ until he went to Heaven.", "In the same way, I am God, but I have not to speak of it, because it is quite natural. Yet sometimes, I have to declare it.", "I AM GOD, but I do not have to know I am God, for I have always been that.", "Let there be one Lord, one King!", "Ted Jesus Christ GOD". Yes, clearly there is a list here. And I would appreciate if you would please never misrepresent my statements. If you wish to object to a person being on the list, then do it conventionally and create a subject heading for that person. "Flawed" "systemic bias" "npov" are blanket words which are unactionable. Every entry in this list has been discussed and their entry is the result of the discussions so far. Further discussions can happen. We are not concerned with whether or not someone wants to be on a list. It is objective in nature - either they made the statement or they didn't. In future versions it may be - either they were considered as a deity, by themselves or someone else, or they weren't. Knowledge of eastern concepts is useful, as it helps us to validate whether a subject encouraged it or not. Stating that the subject of god is simply too ambiguous to warrant inclusion in an encyclopedia is being disingenuous. It must be documented as this is the resting place for the sum of all human knowledge. --Alterego 15:26, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Dear Alterego, the list of quotes you give is interesting, but I guess they are all out of context. You maybe right with your assessment about certain people, but you may not be right with others. How do you know that your judgement is fair, and why do you need to judge at all? To record, each individual case is there for record. IMHO the chances a great that this list serves more to confuse than to clarify. What do you mean by 'unactionable'. Does this mean that I regard the existance of this list, which is quite arbitrary in a way, as an inevitable event of nature, which I can not critizise? I hope that this is not what you are saying. Yes, I do ask you to exclude Mother Meera from such a list, but i also find it awkward that I would have to plead for something like this. I think its assuming to call a list like this 'objective'. How could you think to be objective and devoid of subjectivity? The subject of god is ambiguous, not too ambiguous for inclusion in an encyclopedia, but certainly too ambiguous for a meta-category without distinction. Look alone on the type of differentiations you make: Is it god or God or gods? Plural or capital or only small, and then according to your own words the Christian God is omnipotent, the Hindus are not (supposedly), while a clear understanding reveals that Hindus view God as one within multiple forms. They are not polytheistic, but henotheistic. There is so much confusion just in this small dialog of ours, that I think that such a list serves only to confuse and not to clarify. Bringing the wrong things together, according to the judgements of self-declared judges, helps to cloud uand reasert prejudices. -- mizar ॐ Talk 23:27, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
but I guess they are all out of context'. This isn't a guessing game and it's not about chances. All the quotes are sourced and there have been discussions around most of them. If you feel one is out of context please bring your evidence for the rest of us to read. If it is agreed to be the case then that person can be removed from the list. Please put the discussion under its own heading so the conversation can be referenced later. --00:35, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Zappaz your recent edits to this article show you are unwilling to discuss changes with other editors. You have not participated constructively in any recent discussions regarding the title and you do not give other editors the courtesy of explaining your opinion. Why is that? --Alterego 19:31, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Alterego: I have make my points quite clearly and have discussed these issues with you and other editors over the last few months. There were proposals made to which six editors voted for, that you dismissed based on a request for further discussion. This discussion is now progressing quite nicely, thanks to the contributions of several new editors. Whatever your assessment of my participation is, I intend to continue to contribute to this discussion to the best of my ability. I have requested the help of other editors, that hopefully will come to our help in NPOVing this article once and for all. I would appreciate less "Zappaz-bashing" for a while. Thanks. --ZappaZ 21:32, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
You mean when you recently put a template on the page saying there was discussion happening here, and then left, only to come back an unilaterally implement your point of view completely irregardless of said discussions, and further irregardless of the fact that entries are not added or removed until discussion has taken place? By contribute do you mean to repeat this same behavior? You have made sweeping statements about the article such as that it is systemically biased, NPOV, that it has innuendo, and further implied bias. But you are unable to provide concrete evidence for any of these points. Your comments are not actionable. I have always approached the bench with hard evidence (read around - I provide some in nearly every post) and its about time that you approached this article with some real-life motivation and intention to fix the facts one by one in coordination with others and not based on your perception of what is "NPOV" "POV" "systemically biased" and "implicit bias". You do not encourage coordination - it is because of your decision to edit this article without conversation that this article was locked and it is not something that I am soon going to forget. A lot of progress that could have been made has been stopped. Just so there isn't a lack of hard evidence in this post, read up a little bit in this conversation and you will see me provide citations - e.g., constructive discussion - with another user. You came along and ignored said citations making your wide sweeping unactionable claims about "systemic bias" et al. Inconceivable. --Alterego 22:57, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
OK, Alterego. I am gone. The article is all yours. (What is inconceivable is your inability to accept input from other editors like me that may have a different style than yours. This is not a court of law, neither an argumentation excercise.) I may visit again sometime in December. Promise. Ciao. Good luck to other editors! --ZappaZ 23:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, when you come back in December, keep in mind that even when no one else is willing to discuss with me, I explain my edits on the talk page (hard evidence: consecutively, no one replied to my citation-backed reasoning for L Ron Hubbard, David Koresh, David Icke, and James I of England. You may call that talking to myself, but I call it documenting every single thing I do here and the reason I did it. I never have appreciated you stepping on all that hard work with your unilateral, unexplained and not-based-on-external-sources edits. --Alterego 23:51, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Unprotecting under the One Revert Rule

I'm unprotecting this article and putting it on 1RR (The One Revert Rule). This means that any single editor who performs more than one revert in a 24-hour period without good reason (ie reverting vandalism or his own edit) may be viewed as disruptive. I'm doing this so that people who want to make normal, everyday edits can do so. If someone makes an edit that you regard as unacceptable, please write about it on this talk page. If people agree, then someone else may revert the edit for you. --Tony SidawayTalk 19:52, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Looks like a couple editors have used up their 1 revert already, on Jesus (of course). I personally think he should belong, but the dispute about whether he said he was God should be mentioned. Would such be acceptable to people on both sides? Friday (talk) 21:50, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
That dispute was already mentioned in the article. Consensus was already reached above. The problem with the way the current admins run Wikipedia is that people have to go around in circle for weeks just to keep the status quo over the people who want to make it worse and worse. Actually improving articles looks like an unattainable goal at this point. DreamGuy 22:09, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks Tony, I will respect the One Revert Rule and if we really do have topical discussions on each entry it will be unnecessary. I would, however, appreciate an admin stepping up to the plate if someone removes/adds an entry without also fixing the table-row highlighting and removing the references. Probably we want to go back to the previous version, and I don't think that should be counted as someone's "revert". Cheers. --Alterego 22:52, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
Good call, Tony. Goodluck in ensuring everyone observes the 1RR; 'tis quite sensible solution. Now I wash my hands of this. El_C 23:17, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm watching this closely. I will interpret the word "revert" somewhat liberally. The message is: discuss what you are doing and ensure that you have wide agreement before performing an edit. If you think an edit may be reverted by someone else, it probably wouldn't be wise to make it. But discuss it on this talk page and argue why it should be made. This still seems to be edit war, and in the circumstances nobody should be pouring petrol into this bonfire, so be careful about your edits. --Tony SidawayTalk 23:43, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

I object to this "business as usual" approach. The issue at hand is not about who gets included and who is not included.

The discussion needs to go back to the basics of:

  • What is this list for? How can we have an article on this subject that is NPOV?
  • How do we take care of western biases in regard of the concept of "god", as explained by some editors?
  • What is the criteria?
  • What is the most appropriate title?
Once these issues are resolved and consensus reached, it should be a walk in the park to edit this article. Without these basics in place this article will continue to be a minefield and atract editwarring, as there will always be those that will fight for inclusion of certain persons, while others will fight for exclusion of others. The removal of these discussions into an archive is also inapproriate, so I have restored these. ≈ jossi ≈ 00:11, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I can't help you with any of that, I'm just the janitor. I suggest you take the issues you raise, which I think are worthy of consideration, to Requests for comment. --Tony SidawayTalk 00:17, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

WIll do thanks. ≈ jossi ≈ 02:53, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Not to be contrary, but it's really easy to ask a lot of questions. If you don't want things to be "business as usual" are you going to do more than fanning hot coals? --Alterego 07:08, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Asking a lot of questions is a good thing in this community. It allows other editors that are not so involved as you are in this article, to provide input that may help address the ongoing disputes that this article has generated for months now. The power of WP is in its aggregation and the collaborative nature of its editing process. My actions in requesting the RfC is the best action possible given that editors involved have been unable to resolve their differences as it pertains to this article's NPOV, suitability, title, criteria, etc. ≈ jossi ≈ 15:47, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
You made it a personal mission to ensure that this article did not go back to "business as usual". Naturally, I anticipate action on your part. Otherwise, as far as i'm concerned everything is business as usual. Action does not equal asking questions. I can hop into any of nearly 1 million articles on the English Wikipedia and start asking the questions you have asked without providing anything concrete to hold them up. Such is the way of vague, widesweeping statements. They take absolutely no effort to conjure up and require a legion of effort to counteract. --Alterego 15:57, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Please lower your tone, Alterego. Thanks. I am contributing in my own way. You are making statements of bad faith on my part and these are absoultely not welcome. . ≈ jossi ≈ 19:57, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Jesus!

May I remind those editors, who are not aware of this fact, that:

  • Wikipedia is not in the business of doing bible exegesis
  • Wikipedia is not in the business of deciding whether any particular quote attributed to Jesus in the canon has been said by the historical Jesus (assuming his existence)

Venturing into these areas is original research. So we can all put aside the holy scripture and close the The Sword Project window while making our valueable one revert.

We essentially can trust the theologicans and quote their percentage assuming Jesus said he is god, are drop the row, due to insufficent sourcing. Same with Krsna.

Pjacobi 22:32, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Explaining my edits - there shouldn't be "reverts" here.

I am going to explain all my edits, and I think you should too. I have put back all the entries that were removed without discussion. A lot of work has gone into discussing and validating each entry and no one should be added or removed without a topic heading on the talk page where quotes and other facts are discussed. Please reference the following past discussions:

Let me repeat: everyone who is in the list right now is there due to past discussions, and needs to have their own topic heading before being removed (or added). Thanks for your help on this, it's how we got this far. --Alterego 22:38, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, our todo list has a ton of work on it that needs to be done, if you're looking for something to do! --Alterego 23:18, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Mother Meera

This is a quote by Mizar from above. As I see it his position is that she passively allows herself to be worshipped as a god, and will answer direct questions regarding the subject from her followers, but does not make proclomations. Here is the quote that we have from her. I agree it is of dubious nature. I would welcome further quotes from Mother Meera that put this in a better perspective. --Alterego 22:46, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

  1. ^ Q: All the Gods, all the paths, all the revelations are in the Mother. Does this mean that anyone in the world from whatever background can be taught by you and awakened to the Divine within the terms of their own religion, or lack of it? Mother Meera: Yes. My light is everywhere. Harold G. Coward, John R. Hinnells, Raymond Brady Williams (March 1, 2000). The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada, and the United States, 62. Google Print. ISBN 0791445097 (accessed July 5, 2005). Also available in print from SUNY Press.


What you wrote is actually on the wiki.(If that is so, why connect it here?) The footnote is a statement from the book, where MM identifies herself with her aspect of the Divine Mother. You should note that she does not make such statements as proclamations, but only answered the question of a devotee. MM clearly recognizes her own human aspect. She does not claim all-knowingness or omnipotency. In fact she sees herself only as one of several other Avatars on earth today. A recognition of her Avatarhood is irrelevant to her. It has no meaning for someone who has no experience of it. I have heard her say many times, that many Indian Gurus are being looked upon by their desciples as God, that this was normal, and she had obviously no objection to it. Therefore I think to publish such a link to this list on the site is irrelevant. There is already a link to Avatar, and it does put a wrong emphasis on the issue. -- mizar ॐ Talk 16:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)


Lord God our Pope (Dominus Deus Noster Papa) Another God on Earth (Alter Deus in Terris): And a reply to a Pamphlet by the Rev. Sydney F. Smith, S.J., entitled Does the Pope claim to the God?

As early as late last year there was a conversation regarding the pope. An anonymous user provided several quotations such as the following:

I am in all and above all, so that God Himself and I, the vicar of God, hath both one consistory, and I am able to do almost all that God can do…wherefore, if those things that I do be said not to be done of man, but of God, what do you make of me but God? Pope Nicholas (Decret. par. Distinct 96 ch. 7 edit. Lugo 1661)

Another anonymous user was even more adament about the pope being listed here. These quotes are rather easily available on the Internet, and usually by anti-Christian groups with a vendetta. I therefore set out to find discussion of the specific topic before the Internet age. I came across the following holding, a copy of which was sent to me via Interlibrary loan. It is my intention to put this text here so that it is documented in our conversation and so that, if I never get around to typing the last 20 pages, at least this first part is here. It is ~20 pages so I have not typed the whole thing yet to go on Wikisource. However, I think the first few pages are rather indicative of the tone. I find this to be a very serious correspondence that is extremely well cited by those taking part in it, and the discussion as a whole is very enlightening. --Alterego 16:33, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Charles Hastings Collette (1896). Lord God our Pope (Dominus Deus Noster Papa) Another God on Earth (Alter Deus in Terris): And a reply to a Pamphlet by the Rev. Sydney F. Smith, S.J., entitled Does the Pope claim to the God?. Protestant Alliance. ISBN B0008A1EZC. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)

The subject, the title of this tract, has been unexpectedly revived. The Rev. J. Hiles Hitchens, D.D., published a pamphlet under the title "Papal Supremacy, or the Present Struggle," in its third edition. (Protestant Alliance, 430, Strand, London.) in page 5 we read:--"In Roman Catholic books the following, "among other titles, are given--Pontiff-The Prince of Priests--Vicar of Christ--Head of the Body--Foundation of the Building--Bridegroom of the Church--Our Lord God the Pope--Another God on Earth--King of King's and Lord of Lords." This pamphlet was distributed at the close of a Protestant lecture delivered at Bow, on behalf of the Protestant Alliance. A copy came into the hands of a Roman Catholic, who tereupon wrote to the Secretary, Mr. A. H. Guinness, the following letter:--

Secretary, Protestant Alliance

Sir, A pamhlet issued by your alliance was handed to a Protestant friend of mine last night (Friday) at the Bow and Bromley Institute, after a Meeting held there by your Society. He very properly handed it to me being a Catholic, for answer to the "sweeping" assertions therein. It is not my intention to refute these statements to you, though I have done so (with the greatest ease) to my friend. Indeed, the whole of the pamphlet is pregnated with so much uncharitableness that in this present intelligent age no honest Protestant would read it without disgust. The pamphlet is entitled "Papal Supremacy," or the Present Struggle, by the Rev. J. Hiles HItches, D.D. As no address is given to the author I cannot write to him respecting it. But as your Alliance published the Pamphlet, you are responsible for the statements contained therein. Now the author states on Page 5, that "in Roman Catholic books the following among other titles are given to the Pontiffs"--"Our Lord God the Pope"--"Another God upon Earth." The author does not state the names of these Roman Catholic books wherein these titles are given, and I must ask you, in common honesty, to send me at once the names of the books and the publishers, as I have never heard of such blasphemous titles being used in any of our books and should be the first to denounce such blasphemy, if these words can be proved to have been written' in Roman Catholic books. If these statements cannot be proved, then they are gross libels, and should be withdrawn publicly by you at once. I trust you will, therefore, send me the information at once, or otherwise I must find some means of having these words substantiated.

Mr. A. H. Guinness at once replied to this letter, giving Dr. Hitchen's address, and furnished authorities substantiating the statments to which the writer of the letter referred. I now state the following--

And first as to the words "Dominus Deus noster Pap"--"Our Lord God the Pope." "To believe that Our Lord God the Pope has not the power to decree as he has decreed, is to be deemed heretical." These words appeared in the Roman Canon Law in the Gloss on the "Extravagantes" of Pope John XXII.* "Cum inter," Tit. xiv, cap. iv., ad Callem. Sexti Decretalium, Paris 1685. On this important subject I prefer to quote from Roman Catholic authority. I refer to "Tentativa Theologia," a Treatise on Episcopal Rights, &c., by Father A. Pereira, Priest and Doctor of Lisbon; English translation by Mr. Landon, London, 1847. Pereira, in page 180, tells us:--"It is quite certain that Popes have never reproved or rejected this title 'Lord God the Pope' for the passage in the Gloss referred to appears in the edition of the Canon Law published in Rome in 1580 by Gregory XIII. The Index Expurgatorious of Pius V., which orders the erasure of other passages, yet leaves this one."

It is important to note that to Pope Gregory's edition is appended his Bull in these terms:--"We decree, sanction, and ordain, that it shall not be permitted to any one . . . . to add to or take from, to alter or transpose, or to add any interpretation to the book of Canon Law as revised, corrected and expurgated by our command, &c." Thus leaving the words "Dominus Deus noster Papa," confirmed by his Ex-Cathedra and infallible Bull.

Father Pereira further tells us (p. 130):--"So it is in two editions "published at Lyons in 1584 and 1606; "and in those of Paris published in 1586, 1601, and 1612." It also occurs in those of Lyons in 1556, 1559, 1572, and those of Paris in 1522, 1561.*

Our Bishop Jewell exposed this "blasphemous" title given to the Pope, for, be it understood, the Corpus Juris became the Law of the Roman Church, and one of her "Constitutions," within the definition of an Article of the Creed of Pope Pius IV., which declares:--"Ecclesiastical Traditions and all the Constitutions of the same Roman Church." The dictum thus became an article of the Roman Faith,--Bishop Jewell's exposure had its effect, and, notwithstanding the command of Gregory XIII., the word "Deus" has been silently withdrawn from the Gloss, though Gregory's decree is still appended to all subsequent editions of the Corpus Juris Canonici! But we still find in several previous and subsequent editions the Decree attributed to Pope Nichals I., "Satis evidenter." "It is clearly enough shown that the Pope, who it is certain, was styled a God by pious Prince Constantine . . . . can neither be bound in any degree by the secular power; and that God canot be judged by men is manifest."*

It is doubtful if Constantine ever used this expression, but then it remains in Rome's Canon Law. We further read in every edition of this Canon Law:-- The Pope of Rome may be judged of none but God only, for although he neither regard his own salvation nor no one else, but draw down with himself in numerable persons to hell, yet no mortal man in the world presume to reprehend him, except by chance he be convicted of heresy."

The reason for this, we must presume, is founded on the dictum of Pope Nicholas I. that as Prince Constantine styled the Pope a God, that it is manifest that God cannnot be judged by man! But who would be bold enough to charge an infallible Pope with heresy?

More than a hundred examples of extravagances similar to those in the above text are collected in the "Gravamina adversus Syn. Trident, Restit. P. ii caus. viii. Ob. Tyrannidem Papae, p. 201. Argent, 1565.

This theory is carried out at the present day on the coronation of a Pope, with the triple crown to mark the triple jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over heaven earth and purgatory. The ceremony is thus described in an official document:--"After the election and proclomation, the Pope attired in the pontifical habit, is borne in the Pontifical chair to the church of St. Peter, and is placed on the High Altar, where he is saluted for the third time by the Cardinals by kissing his feet, hands and mouth. In the mean time the Ambrosian Hymn Te Deum is sung. Then the Pontif descends from the altar, and is carried to the vatican Palace."*

The ceremony takes place in the Church of St. Peter. The Pope is placed upon the High Altar of that Church, a spot consecrated, according to the Romish theory of the Mass, by the actual presence of the body blood soul and divinity of a living Christ. He sits on the High Altar using it as his footstool; and enthroned as a King, he is adored as a God in the same manner as is the consecrated wafer; adored by the Cardinal Princes who kiss his feet, which rest on the Altar of the Supreme! "He sitteth in the temple of God shewing himself as if he were God." The same account is given of the inauguration of Pope Pius Ix. in the R.C. paper "The Universe" of the 27th June, 1846.

More information on the text and where it can be located is available at User:Alterego/Lord_God_our_Pope --Alterego 16:39, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

RfC Summary

RFC placed on 02:58, 18 September 2005 (UTC): Ongoing disputes and edit wars (for several months) concerning inclusion/exclusion of certain persons and the article's NPOV status. Request comments from editors on these issues:

  • How can we have an article on this subject that is NPOV?
  • How do we take care of the concept of "god" in Judeo-Christian cultures as opposed to Eastern cultures?
  • What is a suitable criteria for inclusion on this list?
  • What would be the most appropriate title?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jossifresco (talk • contribs) 21:01, September 17, 2005.

Comments

  • The list is meant to document human beings who have been considered gods by themselves. Currently, that is proven by the most common sense measure of them having said as much.
  • The folks who claim a "western bias" have extrapolated single entries to the entire list, and make wide and sweeping statements, where the conclusion does not follow. The main point they make is that the concept of god is just too ambiguous to approach it in an encyclopedic sense.
  • The criteria is that they indicated they were a god using the most common sense notion of such.
  • The appropriate title is up for grabs. I've suggested some alternatives but for the most part folks aren't willing to actually discuss it. List of postulated human deities is about as far as i'm willing to think it out without discussion with other editors. This broadens the scope of the article to human beings for whom we can't show considered themselves a god, but could also have simply been worshipped as a god by others. Since Jesus and Krishna have both been postulated to be human deities, they easily fall within the scope of this title.
  • Cheers. --Alterego 06:54, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
(note: RFCs are designed to alllow the voices of other editors rather than the ones involved in the current dispute, to be heard. I would suggest that Alterego and other involved editors refrain from commenting below. Thanks. ≈ jossi ≈ 15:41, 18 September 2005 (UTC))

Comments

  • How can we have an article on this subject that is NPOV?
    • Use a title that explicitly states the nature of the list.
    • Clearly state the criteria for inclusion in the introduction and then stick with them. As of now, the title and introduction are incongruous. The introduction is far too weak for such a controversial topic. It sould be expanded to explicitly enumerate all criteria for inclusion on and exclusion from the list.
    • Clearly state the criteria for exclusion from the list (by definition, not applicable) in the introduction and then stick with them. For example, do those claimed to be an avatar, messiah or Jesus Christ qualify or not.
    • Add a two-tiered heading structure based on definitions for gods/God used and the source of the claim. Sort people by topics and subtopics. — RDF talk 16:51, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
      • <Type of deity/god>
        • <Source of claim: person/followers/critics>
    • All evidence offered should be explicitly related to the stated criteria and referenced.
    • All supurfluous evidence should be removed.
  • How do we take care of the concept of "god" in Judeo-Christian cultures as opposed to Eastern cultures?
    • Enumerate all applicable definitions. State which definition(s) apply in the evience section for each entry.
  • What are suitable criteria for inclusion on this list?
    • Considering there seems to be a lack of consensus on a defining title for the article, suitable criteria are virtually impossible to establish, hence the lack of consensus on the criteria as well. The criteria for inclusion should include:
  • What would be the most appropriate title?
    • An explicit and complete definition of the list – you all have to decide what that is, e.g.:
      • List of deity or God claimants
      • List of people claimed to be a deity or God

— RDF talk 04:32, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

  • I go along with most of what RDF says, with the proviso that I'm unsure that the article should really be here (largely because its subject matter is vague – and potentially vast – and open to endless PoV debate). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:34, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
  • -

RFC

I'm unsure that the article should really be here (largely because its subject matter is vague – and potentially vast – and open to endless PoV debate) --Mel Etitis

I agree with Mel. For example, Hindus and many mystics from various cultures believe that all beings have a divine essence. How does that jibe with this list? But maybe Hindus and mystics don't mean the same thing that Alexander the Great or Jim Jones meant. But how could one ever resolve that question neutrally? Does Adi Da, for example, believe that all beings are divine? Because surely that bears on what he mean when he says that he is god. The article seems to assume that people from many cultures and historical periods mean something similar by the use of similar words. That assumpton is not true. Thus this article does not list like things. It is a mishmash. Further, it seems to have an agenda behind it. --goethean ॐ 15:04, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Well said, Goethean. About the agenda: It's fairly obvious to me. The idea is grouping things, with something ugly and evil, in the hope that the stench of it may extend itself to the environment. That's really the point. Look at the inclusion of massmurderers Charles Manson, Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite, inbetween Krishna and various Hindu mystics. The message for the innocent onlooker seems to be clear: Claimants to Godhead are potentially dangerous and crazy. It's this strange kind of mishmash, and a completely unproprtionate weighting between contemporary mystics and dangerous psychotics which is so annoying and and there seems to be a system behind it. This kind of comparison is a known tactics to discredit religious minorities, as Hindus are in the west. If you really wanted to include Hindu claimants to Avatarhood, you would have to virtually include hundreds. Like this, this list is completely arbitrary. Where is Ramakrishna, Shirdi Sai Baba, Sri Aurobindo (of whom at least many believed he was an Avatar), or all the historic Hindu Acharyas like Adi Shankara, Sri Chaitanya, Madwahcharya, Sri Ramanuja etc. There are innumerable contemporary ones, I could immediately name you a few more. but as it is, I do not really support this list. So, in conclusion
  1. I think this list is an arbitrary mishmash, designed to discredit religious thought that is 'unchristian', so I am against it and see no real advantage in it.
I tend to agree with this comment. Either way, these sorts of lists never stabilise and the criteria for including people will always be fuzzy. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 21:38, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
  1. If there are enough people, who think they must have this list, which I don't like,
    1. they should create separate sections, one would be Avatars with a clear Hindu cultural context,
    2. with an explanantion above the section, explaining the concept of Avatarhood within that religion
    3. there must be a statement, that this list is far from representative.
    4. other sections could be 'historic figures', 'founders of world-religions'and those who claim to be Jesus.
    5. criminals like Manson/Jones/Applewhite should be either left off, or there should be a warning that their inclusion is in no way a comment to religious views, like the eastern ones.
    6. a backlinking to this list should not be enforced.
    7. until everybody is okay with this list, the neutrality-warning should stay on the article-site, not the dicussion site as right now. --mizar ॐ Talk 21:39, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
This list is the result of a discussion over every single entry in it. While there may be Christians who edit this article, there are also worshippers of Mother Meera, Sun Myung Moon, Chuck Anderson, and others who are distinctly non-Christian (why the ad-hominem anyway?). Who are we to call someone or something "ugly and evil" and then categorize them based on that very biased perception of them? What makes any one person on the list any more dangerous or crazy than anyone else? I agree that categorization is in order, but some of your comments are way off track here. I am not sure what goal you want to achieve by leaving "criminals" off the article despite the fact that they have the same human rights as everyone else to have religious beliefs, but it doesn't sound like we are making sure that their notable point of view is represented. --Alterego 21:51, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
This list is the result of a discussion over every single entry in it.
That doesn't counter the claim that the assumptions of the article are POV.
While there may be Christians who edit this article, there are also worshippers of Mother Meera, Sun Myung Moon, Chuck Anderson, and others who are distinctly non-Christian (why the ad-hominem anyway?).
It is not ad hominem to note that the assumptions on which this article is based exhibit systemic bias against non-Christian religions.
Who are we to call someone or something "ugly and evil" and then categorize them based on that very biased perception of them?
In fact, it is within NPOV to call mass murder "ugly and evil".
What makes any one person on the list any more dangerous or crazy than anyone else?
Some have mudered people, and others have not. That seems relatively straightforward.
I am not sure what goal you want to achieve by leaving "criminals" off the article despite the fact that they have the same human rights as everyone else to have religious beliefs, but it doesn't sound like we are making sure that their notable point of view is represented.
Mass murderers do not have a right to be compared to Eastern religious figures. --goethean ॐ 22:21, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Charles Manson is not a mass murderer, so please stop pushing that point. He never killed anyone, and was convicted of murder based on the fact that he ordered others to kill and they obliged. The crime his followers committed was mass murder, not him. I don't really care about the guy, but lets stick to the facts. Now, suppose we have a person A who said they are a god and are from a western country, and person B, an eastern religious figure. Our role in this article is to describe their religious beliefs, insofar as it was postulated that they are both a human and a deity. Person A may have been a kleptomaniac from outer-space, which is very interesting. But it has nothing to do with their religious beliefs. Eastern religious figure B may have been accused of murder in their country, but that too has nothing to do with their religious beliefs (indeed, Sathya Sai Baba and practically every notable religious figure has been accused of something completely atrocious - usually molestation). It is outside the scope of the article to start subcategorizing based on who likes pez candy, who can hoola-hoop, and who has a mullet. (and reductio ad absurdum is a valid method of argument). Whether or not you recognize it, Charles Manson is a western religious figure who was worshipped, just as your eastern religious figure who is also worshipped. Saying they are somehow different based on some other characteristic that is not related to their religious beliefs doesn't fit here, and I don't personally find hand-wavy accusations of "systemic bias" based on such very convincing. --Alterego 22:46, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Spare your false tears Alterego. CM is not convicted as massmurderer, but he is convivted and since several decades in high security prison for initiating this very crime. And especially, he is known for this, that is, this is what people associate with his name. The same is true for other murderers like Beltway Snipers, and those who initiated mass-suicide, for which they would be, if they were still alive, equally convicted. I realize a certain double standard here, when in the list of cults, any one newspapers report like whashington post seems to be enough evidence for the claim, here court-cases and the results of police-investigations don't seem to suffice. I told you before that I regard potentially everyone as God, including myself. You answered that I wasn't enough known to be included on this list. Now here we go: These people which I crossly referenced as mass-murderers are known for these crimes, and not for claiming divinity. This is what marks them out, and there can be no doubt, that they are percieved by the great mass of people as something ugly and evil, and it is this association which is being created. You could also make a list of people who wear sandals, and group Nero with Jesus, and you could naively say, you were just interested that they were wearing sandals. Thats your type of argument, Alterego. And,as you say, that you have no beliefs or personal investments in this (which I doubt seeing the fire in your comments), you can't speak yourself free of prejudices. This one can easily see in your comments here and in the footnotes. I don't see anything great in purporting such prejudices. Everybody believes in something, and if it's just that your brain rests on your shoulders. -- mizar ॐ Talk 12:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, Alterego, if one thing is obvious is that you are not a naive person :), so why is that you take such a naive approach to Mel Etitis, Goethean, and Mizar's arguments? Systemic bias is rather obvious when you are pairing Krsna with Charles Manson. Put yourself on the shoes of the ocassional reader of this article. What do you see/interpert/gain by reading such a list? If experienced editors have objections and concerns, what would you say of readers? ≈ jossi ≈ 22:57, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I don't worship anyone - I have absolutely no beliefs in anyone or anything except the fMRI of my brain sitting on this cd on my desk. So when someone comes here who thinks CM is repulsive yet Krishna is someone to be worshipped, I am quick to point out that at some point someone worshipped CM and had never even heard of Krishna in the first place. Krishna does not belong on a pedestal that CM doesn't get to climb on as well. We're supposed to tell the story from both (or more) sides. That's fine if one person values an eastern religious figure - and I agree with the point that we need to be as completely representative of that as we are of western figures - but what's not fine is letting the valuation of that person override other folks as well. There has never been anything vindictive about any of the entries in this article - it's just based on the best facts that we have. What we need are more facts about eastern figures - it's been on the todo list a long time! (that said, i'd like to get started on the restructuring and finding of these facts...) --Alterego 23:15, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
You're laying it on a bit thick, aren't you?
We're supposed to tell the story from both (or more) sides.
And that's exactly what you are not doing. The very assumptions of this article ensure that the story is only told from the side of Western reductive skepticism, where Charles Manson and the Beltway Sniper are considered to be similar to Krishna and Jesus. This is a minority viewpoint that you are hoisting on the Wikipedia. As we have said over and over and you have repeatedly ignored, the claim of Krishna is simply not similar to the claim of the Beltway Sniper and your other murderers: Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Marshall Applewhite. My opinion is that this article is not worth saving in any form. It has no value apart from misinterpreting and mocking the religious beliefs of Christians, Hindus and cults. --goethean ॐ 14:49, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Outstanding..."I am the founder of Wikipedia:WikiProject Freedom of religion". I'm glad to have you here editing. Let me present a quote from your user page. "Neutrality is all about presenting competing versions of what the facts are. It doesn't matter at all how convinced you are that your facts are the facts. If a significant number of other interested parties disagrees with you, the neutrality policy dictates that the discussion be recast as a fair presentation of the dispute between the parties. --Larry Sanger" I think what that means is that we need to recast this as a fair presentation of the dispute between the parties. Eastern thought needs to become more fairly represented in the article, and every person's religious freedom's should be respected as well, including Charles Manson, Marshall Applewhite, et al. You see one set of facts, I see another, here is our comprimise. --Alterego 15:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Thank you Alterego for allowing us a little insight into your agenda here:
I find a list including both Charles Manson and Jesus Christ within its categorization intriguing. - Alterego 1:29PM on Nov 23.
The archives are full of people telling you that your little project is insulting and POV. You make it quite clear that you don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks, and that you will push your POV until forced to do otherwise. --goethean ॐ 15:09, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I do find it intriguing, and the fact of the matter is that at various times CM said he is Jesus Christ, and it is well known that he said that. Don't mistake it as an agenda - I've never done anything here that I didn't think was based on facts. If this list didn't captivate my interest why would I be here? Now, it's on my agenda to finish my cognitive science homework, so i'm off to spread more pov. --Alterego 15:45, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
To touch a little more on this - you are attempting to spin my words as me saying "oh look, we can compare a (your words) 'mass murderer' with someone worshipped by 2 billion followers." But in fact, Charles Manson said, and sometimes more directly, "I may be Jesus Christ. I have not yet decided who I am." Surely you find the List of people who claim to be Jesus Christ to be an incorrigible agenda. To think! Any mishmash of criminal, rapist, and mass murderer could claim to be Jesus Christ and end up on that list. Why, what an offense to Christians all around the world! The agenda of the person who created that list is obvious! /sarcasm Sometime's it's necessary to drive the point home. --Alterego 15:53, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
It occurs to me that if Hindus believe all beings to be divine, then that belief entails that they believe that they themselves are divine. Therefore, we must include all Hindus (and adherents to other religions that consider all beings to be divine) on this list. --goethean ॐ 15:17, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
The problem with this argument is that the person must also meet notability requirements. It is logical to assume that for someone to be listed on this page, they must be notable mostly because they claimed to be a god. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 15:27, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
All notable Hindus will still make for a long list. --goethean ॐ 15:37, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Pragmatism has room here. We have and can create categories for groups of x number of people who all believe they are a deity. Enumeration would just be silly. I'm not saying this is the case, but I am saying that if it becomes unbearably long then this is always an option. --Alterego 15:41, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
And then there are pantheists, like Spinoza, who believe that everything is divine. And emanationists, like Plotinus, who believe that everything emanates from the divine and thus is also divine. We'd better include them, too. --goethean ॐ 15:27, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
"To be divine" and "To be a deity" are not synonymous. That's a dead beaten horse by now... --Alterego 15:38, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Your remarks there about the OED apply to the English language. This article, on the other hand, purports to give information from many cultures and historical periods. That argument has no relevance to my point. --goethean ॐ 15:59, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
The agenda of the person who created that list is obvious! <b>/sarcasm</b> Sometime's it's necessary to drive the point home. If that is true, then the list is obviously POV. Satire is POV. WP has a different policy. Obviously you can drive the point home only with a certain POV and very obviously, with a fundamental lack of understanding regarding the concepts of religions, where this presents a valid option. I vote for deletion of this list -- mizar ॐ Talk 16:29, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
A AfD option is always there as a last resort. If you think that this article is a candidate for deletion, please read WE:DEL in which the valid reasons for nominatying an article dor deletion are listed, namely:
  1. Is not suitable for Wikipedia (see WP:NOT)
  2. Original research (including the coining of neologisms)
  3. Vanity page
  4. Advertising or other spam
  5. Hoax
  6. Completely idiosyncratic non-topic
As far as I can see only (1) would apply. If you thing the article deserves nomination for deletion, read Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/Today#AfD_footer. If the dispute is about NPOV only, we will have to find a way to discuss and agree in these discussions. There is no other way I am afraid.≈ jossi ≈ 16:43, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Under "WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_battlegroundWikipedia is not a battleground", it says:
Also, do not create or modify articles just to prove a point. Alterego's comments betray the fact that he broke this rule. --goethean ॐ 17:15, 20 September 2005 (UTC)\
This is another one of your hand-wavy wide-sweeping statements with which you purport to present a logical argument but for which no evidence is presented. I want only to document the facts as presented by academic and otherwise authorities in this article - that is a comment I have made countless times on this talk page, so clearly your previous statement "betrays" the fact that you wish to misrepresent my words wholesale and assume bad faith. --Alterego 18:40, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Also, the assumption that these different claims to divinity are all equivalently "claims to be gods" is Original Research. --goethean ॐ 17:25, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
This is the English Wikipedia and here we use the English language, and the Oxford English Dictionary is the foremost authority on documenting the usage of the English language. I did not do the research, the lexicographer at the OED did. We do not translate words into foreign languages and then translate them back so that they can be used in the article - we explain things in terms of the language at hand. --Alterego 18:35, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I think I agree with Goethean about the original research part. Let me put it in another way: A list like this, where someone tries to create a certain context, and is neither clear about the exact criteria for inclusion nor the title, where one really just tries to invent a certain context, is something very different from an article about an established topic like a person or a society that exists. Therefore the NPOV rule must be applied differently here. As stated so blatantly by Alterego above the agenda is sarcasm (in the context of the list of people who claim to be Jesus Christ, which is miraculously included in this one, as it has only 4 subjects; it also applies here.) It is very well possible that a satire is created through context, and this is obviously the case here. This has certainly no place in WP. On the list several things are combined, like people who are claimed as Avatars, of being Jesus Christ, and Bodhisattvas, all different, from different cultures and not being the same. The in the samples presented one is extremely arbitrary. For example the Dalai Lama is much more than Ching Hai known to be the incarnation of Avilokateshvara. Ramakrishna has said to Vivekananda, that he is the one that was Rama, and the one that was Krishna, but not in your Advaitic sense. To me only a separate list of Avatars and Bodhisattvas and Jesus-Claimants would make sense. But I guess the person puting this up, is more interested in having a representative number of criminals freely mixed with lesser known (or acknowledged) eastern figures, creating an absurd dadaistic mosaic. -- mizar ॐ Talk 23:50, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
You can stop attacking me at anytime. The sarcasm was in the scope of that comment and that comment alone. I do not have an interest in listing any extraneous characteristics along any other (e.g., criminals). I wish only to list in this article postulated human deities. I have agreed that the article needs changes - you are now discussing the article as it was. Towards the bottom of this discussion page is an ensuring conversation of how the article will be. There is no agenda here, and there is no sarcasm here. You have made the wildest freaking comments on this talk page and to be honest I have no idea how you conjure them up. One thing is for sure - you are not willing to have a discussion about how to improve the presentation of the article - a list of postulated human deities - a list which does exist. If all you want to do is discuss the list in the way it was, then I am soon going to cease discussing the past state of the list and begin focusing my energy on the actionable discussion found below. To date you have not made suggestions, you've just thrown your hands up in disgust and misamalgamated my comments to as to leave them unrecognizeable. --Alterego 00:01, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I am not in anyway personal about you. I just use my free capabilty of expression what I see here. You are wrong when you say that I made no productive suggestion, it reflects on your reading capabilities. You could try for example to read above points 2.1-2.7. If you dismiss them in general its not really my problem. That the list exists is not a valid argumentfor its continuation. I will continue to discuss the possibility of deletion, or alternatively its splitting up in other more appropriate lists, like a list of Avatars etc. For that I will enlist arguments, like I just did. -- mizar ॐ Talk 01:39, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

alternatives

Considering there are at least three other related lists of claimants/claimed to be-ers,
it does seem to be theoretically possible to define such a list and criteria. Whether it actually will eventually meet the NPOV criterion certainly remains to be seen. Again, how this list relates to the other lists should be specified, and its unique contribution to Wekipedia stated. If this list has a "hidden" agenda, it most likely is related to the List of purported cults, specifically, conveying a pejorative implication that contemporary members of this list are cult leaders. Any such claims should be explicitly stated and referenced, if they are included. — RDF talk 16:24, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree that the criteria is vague at present. If you look at the evolution of the article title and criteria, it has been a problem of presenting it in a neutral sort of way. If you ask the question, "Have there ever been human beings who were postulated to also be gods" - which is the most general question the article tries to answer - then the answer is YES, that has occured. What sort of a title and criteria capture that? Right now the way we try to capture that is that they said it themselves, but maybe that's not a good way. I disagree with the thought that we need to try to explain the concept of god here in all it's varieties. Not every article needs to explain every single concept it uses - that's why we have other articles.
So what general categories of human beings have been postulated to have been gods?
  • They explicitly said they were - that's an easy one
  • An entire culture was centered around them being a god - the pharaohs etc..
  • Their religion believed that everyone was in of and part of god - e.g., everyone is god. Then that religion as a whole should be listed. E.g., "followers of x.
  • A figurehead who had attained godhood and believed that others could attain godhood too.
  • People who may or may not have considered themselves to be a god, but were worshipped by others as being a god. Jesus, Krishna etc...
  • others...
So what is our standard for inclusion in this case?
  • Notability - the encyclopedias common sense notion
  • Verifiability - who can we cite?
  • Authority - does the entity verifying have academic or otherwise authority?
So how did I create the title "List of postulated human deities" ?
  • There is a List of deities
  • There is a List of fictional deities (and others)
  • So there could also be a "List of x deities"
  • Deity says, " deity or a god, is a postulated preternatural being..."
  • Postulate means "to assume or claim as true, existent, or necessary" [5]
  • Then we have "List of postulated human deities"
What are the benefits of this title?
  • We don't rely on them having said it, probably a silly bar for entrance
  • We are very broad so as to capture the interesting subject matter
  • We don't have to rely on our own ability to interpret materials - we can just cite authorities
  • We don't use the fuzzy concept of the word 'divine'
  • We don't fall into the trap of saying "self-proclaimed" or "self-x" - it's brought a lot of negative attention here
  • We aren't saying someone merely said they were a god but that their words are only a minor "claim" - it's just been postulated
  • We use conventions that have been put together from other articles
Can anyone get behind this? What sorts of things did I miss? How can these ideas be improved? --Alterego 16:30, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Lists also use sections and subsections to clarify and organize complexity. Simply referencing an article with multiple definitions does not clarify or organize the complexity here. The categories noted above should be considered for creating section headings. — RDF talk 17:02, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
In this case, explaining the concept of God as it applies to main religions/cultures is a must, as it is at the core of the article: i.e. people that were/are postulated as gods. In following RDF's comments, I would argue that sectioning the article could really help. One possibility to explore could be sectioning along the lines of concepts of God as it relates to Abrahamic religions and other religions. ≈ jossi ≈ 17:35, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree with both of you. I can expand the current layout of the article to accomodate this and simultaneously make it easier to edit. demo: User:Alterego/sandbox. if you click the "edit" link you only see the folks in that section of the table. I could use some help on the aesthetics. I'm deuteranopic and pretty terrible with color. --Alterego 17:51, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
One of my skills is graphic design... once we get over the current discussion, I will be able to offer a couple of color schemes that may work. ≈ jossi ≈ 22:04, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
That could work, if there is a way to adress the concerns presented by Goethean and Hanumanandas (Mizar) above, that is. ≈ jossi ≈ 21:53, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Proposed sections

Add/Edit/Delete as needed. ≈ jossi ≈ 22:02, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

  1. Avatars with a clear Hindu cultural context (preceded by short explanation on avatarhood)
  2. Founders of world religions
  3. Historical figures (non-religious necessarily, such as Kings, Popes, Pharaos, Mayans etc.)
  4. No need to include sections for people already in List of people who have said that they are Jesus Christ, or List of messiah claimants, unless they have said they are god.
  5. Criminals, deranged etc, can have their own section if preceded by commentary that explains their pathology.
Just two points on this. There is a lot of past discussion on the topic, but typically folks who say they are Jesus Christ will belong on the list. It is still a case-by-case basis, but here is something I put together in the past, derived from Christianity:
  • You believe you are the central figure in the religion of Christianity, which has over 2 billion followers
  • You believe you are the Son of God and have risen from the dead to save mankind from sin and death.
  • You have performed Miracles, such as turning water into wine, and healing the sick.
  • You are the Messiah, promised by God to bring salvation to humanity
  • You are God the Son in the Trinity
  • You are Jesus Christ in the Godhead (Christianity)
  • You are God incarnate <-- the biggie
There are a lot of religious perspectives on Jesus, so not everyone on that list is going to belong, but at least some of them are going to. Regarding people who broken the law, I personally find that to be out of the scope of the list to explain their pathology (or the fact that they are a criminal. Lots of people are lots of things). Another issue is that many times they have not actually been diagnosed, so saying they have schizophrenia, megalomania, encephalitis etc.. is pure conjecture. We can probably be tactful by just putting them in the section for folks who are absolutely known to have said they are god. That category is going to be much smaller now and won't be offending any sensibilities by having JC and CM right next to eachother. --Alterego 22:30, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
People that consider themselves to be Jesus should go on List of people who have said that they are Jesus Christ, people that believe they are the Messiah or a Messiah should go to List of messiah claimants. That is the most sensible approach. ≈ jossi ≈ 22:50, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I will agree to this at first if the reference to the other articles is made in our explanations, but I think it needs to be looked at again in the future. It's not clear that they should not be dual listed, and the reason I say that is because we are not listing them precisely because they said they are Jesus Christ (as the other list does), but because of what that means - because they believed that when they said they are Jesus Christ they were further saying that they are a deity (when that is the case). --Alterego 23:00, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Question on #1: How do avatars listed here relate to the Avatar article and the lists there?
Question on #2: Does this include people who inspired a world religion founded by followers?
Question on #3: Are you saying Popes are non-religious, or that historical figures listed here are not necessarily religious?
This still doesn't address the question of who makes the claim - the person in question / followers / critics. Is that settled? — RDF talk 03:19, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
If we go with the title "List of postulated human deities", then anyone of notability (so long as it's been documented by an authority) can postulate that someone else is a deity, and they will be listed. If they don't fit into any other category, notable folks who called themselves deities can have their own. Not exactly sure what he meant by Pope's under historical figures... --Alterego 04:34, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I know I'm biased, but I know of no credible historian who believes any Pope claimed they were God. According to the Council of Florence Pope's can be removed for "heresy" and proclaiming yourself God would certainly count. So by definition a Pope after the fifteenth century claiming to be God would automatically disqualify himself as Pope. Kind of depressing that issue came up earlier.--T. Anthony 10:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

The unsound and invalid syllogism behind the addition of Spinoza

"Spinoza's philosophy finds Nature to be equal to God. Since he himself is part of Nature, it follows that he believed himself to be God." contributed by Goethean.

A valid and sound syllogism:
All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Socrates is mortal

An unsound syllogism:
Nature is God
Spinoza is part of nature
Spinoza is God

To put it another way:
The brain is the mind
The cerebellum is part of the brain
The cerebellum is the mind

The last two are clearly unsound (and therefore invalid), as the conclusions do not follow from the premises.

Just to interject: the latter two are invalid (the conclusions don't follow from the premises) and therefore unsound. Soundness is a property of valid arguments (the property of having true premises). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:09, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Simply because my fingernail is part of my finger, does not mean that my fingernal is my finger. Assigning a new label to my finger does not change the features of it - this has to do with the reflexivity of identity.

Aside from this, you did not provide any authority other than your own interpretation that Spinoza said he is "God," and I believe you recently accused me of original research. Clearly I have never done something this blatant. To further confound the issue, suggestions have been made to rename the article and recategorize it, but this in part has not taken place because we are awaiting word from you on where and how you are willing to comprimise. Instead, you make unsound edits to the article under the farce of logical entailment. Clearly you have an interest in the progression of the article, otherwise you would not make additions to it. How, then, are we to make actual progress if you are not willing to reach an agreement? --Alterego 23:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't be too sure about the syllogism here. I don't know about Spinoza, but in eastern thought, esp. in Advaita Vedanta, there is a distinction between form and essence. What you have stated above is only true of form, but not of essence.An example would be like this:

The ocean contains waves
the waves do not contain the ocean
the ocean is made up of water
waves are made up of water
both waves and ocean are just water in essence

In Advaitic thought it is essential, that Brahman (God) is indivisable. We are all Brahman, but not in part, because there cannot be parts in Brahman. Any quantification would be Maya, illussion. We are consciousness, self-awareness. Self-awareness is indivisable, this is our essence, it cannot be quantified. -- mizar ॐ Talk 23:59, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived. --Spinoza
Now, you can interpret that in a variety of ways. If there is an authority which has interpreted Spinoza's words as him saying he is god, that's fine. Let's list him. But we can't list him in this article under this title. The article needs to be moved to List of postulated human deities, and it needs a categorization schema. Now, I am willing to set to work and integrate as many of your ideas in a demo page as I can, but to date, this is the first productive thing i've heard you say. I'd like to hear more things, but I am really tired of discussing something which I already agreed is suboptimal. I am an action type of person, and i'm tired of quibbling. --Alterego 00:14, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
the inclusion of Spinoza in this list is completely unmerited. It does not follow from his views that he is God, it follows from his views that he is PART of God as he is only part of the whole of nature with whom he equates God. Whoever decided to include Spinoza in this list obviously doesn't understand him or just has an anti-rationalist or anti-pantheist axe to grind. Spinoza should be removed from this list.
if Spinoza shouldn't be on this list because he is pantheist, then nobody should be on this list because he is a pantheist. That would include almost all Hindu related philosophies, and thats really the problem with this list. -- mizar ॐ Talk 09:49, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

That's poor reasoning. As far as I can tell Spinoza is only on the list for being a pantheist. So that means every pantheist should have to be on the list and that's essentially ridiculous. I won't remove though as things are unresolved.--T. Anthony 08:44, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

So that means every pantheist should have to be on the list and that's essentially ridiculous.
Exactly. That's because the premise for this article – that the Egyptian Pharaohs, Krishna, Alexander the Great, Jesus, Jim Jones, etc. were all making the same claim – is simply false. You have no basis on which to delete Spinoza while keeping the current diverse – indeed, random – assortment of historical and semi-mythic figures. --goethean ॐ 15:37, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
If the point is simply "this list is stupid" you'd be better off doing something else. Maybe putting up on "votes for deletion" again. However I don't think the article is claiming that all these people "made the same claim." In English in least "gods" is a word for the diverse concepts of various deities. So you can claim Alexander the Great, Jim Jones, and the Pharaohs were claiming to be gods without saying they were claiming to be the exact same thing. If you need this to be elaborated further I now claim that both of us are humans. This doesn't mean I'm claiming you are me or that I am you or that we are in any way identical.--T. Anthony 08:35, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

This is not only plain silly, but also original research. Do you have any secondary sources discussing the question, whther Spinoza declared himself to be god? Of course not, because the entire pseudo-article is your pet project of original research, which doesn't belong into an encyclopedia. --Pjacobi 10:11, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree it's silly, but it should be mentioned that Spinoza is no longer in the article. I took him out like a week ago and I don't think he's been placed back. I'm tempted to do some rather "ruthless" editing of this article, but it's so mired in controversy I fear doing that.--T. Anthony 11:42, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Pjacobi, please note that there is at least one secondary source that deals with this subject of this article (but not with Spinoza) i.e. John Hogue Messiahs: The Visions and Prophecies for the Second Coming (1999) Elements Books ISBN 1862045496. It is mentioned in the bibliography. Andries 12:00, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Kysosoma?

I believe he stated he was God and their religion's websites seem to agree so I added him.--T. Anthony 10:57, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Any progress?

Several editors have contributed to this discussion, with a somewhat agreed consensus on re-structuring the article in specific sections. Is this happening? ≈ jossi ≈ 03:35, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Something about Jesus!

Jesus did not claim himself to be an incarnation of God! Most christians believe this way because he was born out of Virgin Marry without a father. This does not mean that he should be included in this list. It must be removed because this list is based on facts rather than some religious beliefs.PassionInfinity 04:12, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

If you want to go "purely on facts" then we aren't quite sure what Jesus claimed on any subject. I think it's widely accepted that there was a Jesus who had followers and then died, but I think most of what we know of him comes from religious sources. I imagine he fits in a historical sense though, other things be uncertain.--T. Anthony 05:29, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Belief of Majority has nothing to do with facts. See Argumentum ad populum. Secondly, this article contains list of people who have said that they are gods. Jesus did not claim that he was god. That is what I wanted to say. PassionInfinity 06:03, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm not talking about belief of majority. In fact I would presume a billion Muslims specifically state he did not claim to be God and many of other faiths would agree. I'm saying I don't think we have any facts to solidly state, by encyclopedia standards, whether Jesus claimed to be a god or not. You can object because it's unclear, but your statement "he did not claim he was god" is merely your opinion. You really can't prove it. Considering the historical effect in least the concept he claimed to be god I think may make it relevant here, but I could see taking it off as disputed. Although if you want to get into it in many books I've read indicate Hong Xiuquan did not claim to be God either. He believed that Jesus was the Son of God, but not God. He had an Arian view of Jesus and of his own role as "Son of God." Although I added her it sounds possible that this MITA woman only believed she contained the Holy Spirit rather then "was the Holy Spirit." Yet you don't object on those or ones that may even be more debatable. In least in the case of Jesus the idea he claimed to be God is the mainstream belief of his followers and the existent writing on him.--T. Anthony 06:20, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
This debate is quite long but in short let me clarify a litlle more. First of all, all the foloowers of Jesus do not believe that he was the son of God nor was he himself God. All muslims believe in Jesus Christ but they neither believe he was the son of God nor they believe that he was crucified. There is a lot of material available, you can read that. The three revealed religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam in chronological order are clearly monotheistic. All are from one God and with Islam comes a stop to these revealed religions. Trinity and crucifixion has no reality and nor was Jesus son of God. Even the word christianity was invented after the perios of Jesus. He never heard of this word ever in his lifetime. His religion as well as religion of Moses was in one sentence was Total submission to the will of God. One word in Arabic language for this sentence is Islam. In totality, therefore, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were all muslims with same religion. We are not left with original christian beliefs nor judaism beliefs. What we are left with is the holy scripture of muslims which is in its original form right now and the most authentic one. PassionInfinity 09:14, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
"In totality, therefore, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were all muslims" I'm aware many, maybe even most, Muslims believe that. Hence I added a mention that Muslims don't believe Jesus claimed to be God. I might add that they believe Jesus was a Muslim if I can get confirmation that's true for all Muslims. However the Muslim view can not be cited as the correct view either, no matter how strongly you believe it to be the truth. I hope you understand that.--T. Anthony 07:50, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The confusion arises, because the article mixes up real humans, for which there exist a historical records, including the fact of their claim to be god (in the ideal case, in fact some humans on the list are rather bad sourced), and characters of mythological tradition, like Jesus and Krshna, for which the claim is in (part of) the tradition. That is not to deny the possible existence of a human being Jesus if Nazareth, but the historical sources for him are spare and totally insufficent to support the listing here. --Pjacobi 10:35, 10 October 2005 (UTC)


I'm trying to move some who claimed to be Jesus, but did not necessarily claim to be God, over to the "Those who claimed to be Jesus, but were not Jesus" thread. The problem is Hong claimed to be the Son of God without claiming to be God or Jesus. Hence when I added him to that it was removed, but I've reverted the removal for now. I'm not sure where to place avatar or Buddha claimants.--T. Anthony 03:24, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I put Mita and Price back as they seem to have claimed to be an incarnation of the Holy Spirit rather than just "containing the holy spirit." I kept some avatar claimants even though that causes some redundancy. In the case of Meher Baba his background was not Hindu though so I think there's a logic in him being here. I also added a list of Buddha claimants to pull off a few. Possibly Suma should be moved there, but I'm not sure. I know the changes I made were pretty radical so I can understand if there's annoyance at them. Especially as I maintained Jesus on the list, but I made sure to add Islamic objections as their's is arguably the largest objection in numerical terms.--T. Anthony 03:48, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Fine but facts are what I am talking about. I mean this article is not based on Christianity and Islam. But Jesus never claimed to be God then why include him?. PassionInfinity 09:42, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I wasn't aware how offensive that belief was to Muslims. So I made the colors actually mean something to deal with it. Jesus, the Pharaohs, Caligula, and Alexander the Great are now in white to essentially represent that "historicity of the claim is disputed or the claim was politically created." (However, and even though my post on this was removed, my statement still stands. Your insistence your interpretation of Jesus is inarguably "the facts" is arrogant and insulting. This can also be removed, but the statement will stand)--T. Anthony 04:00, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
The statement is offensive to the core beliefs of muslims. Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were exactly same in their teachings. I still have to study a lot to know how they invented concepts like Trinity, Incarnation and Reincarnation. I didn't get the statement you are talking about which was removed and still stands. Have you removed Jesus from the list? I could not figure out by looking at the history of the page. PassionInfinity 04:56, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
The statement was that your idea that Moses, Jesus, and Muhammed were exactly of the same religion(or that Jesus didn't claim to be god) is not a fact. It is a theory. On him not claiming to be God it's a rather popular theory among Muslims and non-Muslims, but it's not so accepted as to be established as fact. Your theory that Muhammed, Jesus, and Muhammed had the exact same theory is not well accepted outside Islam. It's a cornerstone for many Muslims, but it's not much more than that. Unless you can give facts there's no reason for the removal. Although I will consider it on the grounds it is disputed. I will NOT consider on the grounds that "it's a fact he never claimed it." Because it is no such thing and to accept it is is an insult to my tradition or faith.--T. Anthony 05:13, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

That should be "Your theory that Muhammed, Jesus, and Muhammed had the exact same teachings is not well accepted outside Islam." That said about half the section on Jesus now discusses Islam and I put Jesus in the somewhat disputed section. I moved most or all of the claimants to be Jesus or Buddha elsewhere. I'm pretty satisfied for now. I have a feeling you're not, but you can't please everyone.--T. Anthony 05:37, 12 October 2005 (UTC) Look, I am not talking about pleasing or satisfying someone. Why are you including Jesus in those claimants? What I mean to say is that why do you believe in christian point of view. Judaism gives some very bad comments about Jesus. Will you accept that all true? How can you prove that Jesus claimed this? All bible versions are not trustworthy and are not in their original forms. What to do? PassionInfinity 11:13, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I am christian, but I imagine that's not what you're asking. If you mean why do I think the idea he claimed it is valid enough to stay on the list there are many reasons. In a historical sense the information we have on him is inconclusive. That could justify taking him off, but I feel inconclusiveness isn't enough in this case. The majority of those who lived in a time period nearer to his existence agreed he claimed to be God. This is mentioned even in writers of the late first century like Ignatius of Antioch and was part of the Nicene Creed. I can add more on the Ebionites and Arians, but the Jesus article is already long as is. Added to that the idea he claimed it is historically significant as it was the majority view from the Council of Nicea to the hijra and is the view of 2 billion people. That does not make it a fact, but in the absence of conclusive evidence either way it does make it important. Lastly that it's disputed is already well dealt with. As mentioned it's the longest article.--T. Anthony 00:02, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I am a Muslimm but I can also imagine that's not what you are thinking. 2 billion people is not an authority. You did not answer my question. I said no bible version is in its original form. Why to trust the Acts of Apotles and Bible from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? PassionInfinity 07:09, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm not convinced you want an answer at this point. I did not mention the Gospels there and added to that I said two billion people doesn't make it a fact. What it does make it is important and that was one part of why I have, and will contine to, keep him on the list. However I also mentioned the historical significance, the opinions of those like Ignatius who lived within the possible lifetimes of some of his followers, etc. I think you need to reread what I wrote a bit more carefully and maybe you'll understand better. What I've consistently said is that the historical evidence is unclear. There is NO strong historical evidence he did not make such a claim, and if you think there is show it to me. The Arians came about two centuries after his death, but if you have Ebionite documents older than Ignatius or the Gospels I'll put that in mind. However in the absence of solid historical evidence either way there is what's mentioned. The opinion of those who met his followers, the historical significance, and yes even the numbers of believers is enough to have him listed. This does not prove it's a fact and I have never argued it does. What it does is prove that the claim matters and is historically important enough, I feel, to keep him on. Now, despite the discussion here, I have tried as much as I can to deal with your objections in my edits. I have gone as far as I can go on that and then further. There is nothing more to say about objections that hasn't been said. I may provide links to the Ebionites if I haven't done so. At this point I suggest you actually do some editing yourself if you are still unsatisfied. An exception to that is I will not accept you taking him off without getting opinions of those here. If the majority support taking him off he can be taken off. If you take him off unilaterally I will unilaterally place him back so the issue can be discussed.--T. Anthony 09:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Well well well, nothing to fight here. I agree there is no strong historical evidence that can deny this claim. Well Muslims are in quite a good majority to deny this claim. How about that? I don't know what made you think so definitely that a messenger of God can himself claim to be a son of God. Even if you believe that he was the only begotten son of God, he himself never claimed to be God. Quran specifically defy this that he was neither crucified nor was he son of God. To your surprise may be, this book is 1 million times more authentic. What do you say? You can say it is believed that he claimed, but you cannot say he claimed. Now, I think you got the point? PassionInfinity 09:41, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
As I said you give no answer nor are you interested in a response from me. The Qur'an however can not be given "a million times more authenticity" at this cite. As that's clearly what you are about you will lose this argument every time because that's what must happen. Your religion can not be placed as the default mindset of this or any article. I have now mentioned the views of Ebionites, Muslims, and others. Put the issue of removing Jesus to a vote or stand down. Because now I'm simply done with you. You appear to be uninterested in anything but bludgeoning people with the superiority of Islam--T. Anthony 10:06, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't really get what you are trying to say. You never addressed any of the issues I have raised! PassionInfinity 09:21, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
I feel a bit more relaxed now, but I'm not sure what you want me to address. If the Qur'an is from God then its view of Jesus will be more accurate. I'm not a Muslim though so at best I think it's maybe "inspired" in some indirect way. As a historian we can dispense with the issue of divine or not or how much altogether. Therefore it has to be seen as a work written almost 600 years after Christ in a land hundreds of miles away. In its defense the Quranic view of Jesus is, arguably, more in sync with the view of the Ebionites and mentioned in the works of Celsus than the Gospels. However Celsus was hostile to Christianity and lived in the late second century as I recall. The Ebionites are more credible, but for the most part we only know their views second hand. The Gospels and the works of the Apostolic Fathers were by people nearer in time and space to Jesus who could've known his actual followers. Their view of events is certainly disputed, but as a source on the life of Jesus I think they have to be given a great deal of weight. The oldest extent literature on Jesus outside that is Gnostic texts and Josephus. The Gnostics have many contradictory claims, but generally state that Jesus, or everyone who believes in him, is God or part God. Or they claim Christ is God who entered Jesus the man at his Baptism. (Somewhat like the view Tenrikyo has of its founder) Josephus mentions Jesus on the cross and "if it be proper to call him a man", but this might be a later interpolation. Sources like Pliny and others simply discuss Christians more than Christ and don't say much either way on what he claimed. In any event yes I think the Gospels and the view of the Apostolic Fathers is valid. Or at the very least I think the view in the first two centuries AD has to be given the most validity and the majority of that view is that Jesus was or claimed to be God.--T. Anthony 12:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Looking you up I see you're an intermediate English speaker so I think maybe I was being unfair. It's possible a language barrier is part of why talking to you was so frustrating.--T. Anthony 12:04, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Correction on Celsus. This is from the article on his statements about Jesus: "His assertion of divine dignity is disproved by his poverty and his miserable end. Christians have no standing in the Old Testament prophecies, and their talk of a resurrection that was only revealed to some of their own adherents is foolishness. Celsus indeed says that the Jews are almost as ridiculous as the foes they attack; the latter said the saviour from Heaven had come, the former still looked for his coming." So he apparently believed Jesus claimed a "divine dignity" and resurrection. Where he was like the Ebionites and the Qur'an, I think, is that he believed Jesus was a vegetarian.--T. Anthony 12:09, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm already feeling a bit bad there. I think maybe it's coming of like I'm insulting the Qur'anic view of Jesus. And maybe in some way I was, but that's not really what I feel overall. What I'm saying is that without a belief in the Qur'an as coming from God I think it would have to be looked at as a view of Jesus from centuries after the fact. This does not mean it's wrong. (Although as a Christian I would believe it is on a personal level) It could in fact be more right because they may have had access to things unavailable to the Christians living in Nazareth or Jerusalem at that time. There's some reason to believe Ebionites continued in Arabia to much later times and if one believes the Ebionites are "truer followers of Christ" then Muhammed would've had more access to them. Also if God told him Jesus's true story then the centuries of writing before are irrelevant. I don't personally believe any of that, and I'm not ever going to do so, but it's all perfectly respectable.--T. Anthony 12:19, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Article status

This article is in shambles. It will either need to be restructured as per some of the proposals made a few weeks ago, or this article is going in the direction of a AfD. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ 17:39, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
I have done as much as I could, and now I am accused of "POV pushing" by User:Hipocrite because of my intervention (note that I am not certain what POV Hipocrite thinks I espouse...). Let it be clear that I do care about an article being useful, encyclopedic and NPOV. But if there is no collaboration and constructuve dialogue to move the articler in that direction, the possibility of an AfD is very much a reality. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ 02:44, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
You probably did a fine job, there's just disagreements in everything. However I'm confused on one thing, wasn't the most recent edit of yours weeks ago?--T. Anthony 03:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes, it was. I was under the impression that several proposals were discussed and none of them implemented. In the meantime the NPOV tag is still on the article. I was expecting that the editors that made these proposals that , btw seemed to have quite wide support, would attempt to implement them. In any case, this is causing me too much stress (being accused of POV pushing is not fun), so I leave this article in your capable hands. There are other articles that can benefit from my contributions in which there is less contention and more fun. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ 04:55, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not certain I followed the whole proposal as it was rather long. I think it stated we'd have separate deals for "Jesus claimants", "Avatar claimants", "God claimants", etc. I am trying to move all Jesus claimants to that thread. However I have kept three, I think, avatar claimants on this list. No one has said much on that, but if they do I'm willing to remove them. Although Meher Baba's Muslim, and possibly Zoroastrian, rather than Hindu background made me think he'd still fit here. The main irritation I've heard is on the issue of Jesus, but the basis of kicking him off seems insufficient to me so far. In any event I'm leaving him on as the idea is historically important in least. Although if he's removed I might not revert the removal. From a Christian perspective he didn't merely say it, he was it, and him being on a list with cult leaders is possibly embarrassing anyway--T. Anthony 05:21, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

However I have kept three, I think, avatar claimants on this list. No one has said much on that, but if they do I'm willing to remove them I have seen you have removed M. Meera as she is already on the Avatar list. You may consider doing the same with Sai Baba, as he definitely falls into the category of Avatar claimants. Still I think that the article is possibly unfair to others who have adopted a Hindu philosophical background like Ching Hai, who is basically an off-shot of Surat Shabd Yoga. -- mizar ॐ Talk 11:41, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Consider it done. Although I think there was a former SaiBabaist who used to frequent here that likely would want him in, but it's not like he'll just vanish. Possibly anyone interested can just expand statements on him at avatar claimants.--T. Anthony 11:53, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Okay I worked on improving the List of avatar claimants and making it distinct from the article avatar. I guess I could've done that kind of work on Buddha claimants, but there aren't that many so far.--T. Anthony 12:37, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Much better :-) What about throwing Beltway Snipers out? He is not known AFAIK for his claim, but instead for some criminal acts. Does he have a following, who believe he is God? -- mizar ॐ Talk 17:39, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Gotcha. I'll take that Fard Muhammed guy off too as it was apparently others who claimed it. Others can edit too though, don't anyone feel I've taken over.--T. Anthony 00:05, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
We should still move this article ot List of people who have been considered deities, though. Otherwise we can't include the people who had followings in the past, but not now. Plus it looks a lot more professional than "List of people considered to be deities". Also, I'm confused about what the asterisk denotes, exactly. Does it refer to someone who has a large following now, or someone who ever had a large following? Because it makes little sense to me that Manco Capac has an asterisk, but not Jesus. -Silence 22:09, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
I took the asterix off Manco Capac. If you want another move feel free to do so, but try to fix as many linkings as you can if you do.--T. Anthony 00:50, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Jesus issue

Kept or taken off? Here's what the segment on Jesus says at the moment.

Among Christians the most popular view is that in the Canonical Gospels he said he was God Incarnate, who took on human nature and human flesh and is the second person of the Holy Trinity. One commonly cited statement attributed to Jesus on his godhood is John 14:10 -"Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.(KJB)" Other similar religious perspectives on Jesus include the Bahá'í Faith, which considers Jesus to be a manifestation of God, and some Hindus, who equate Jesus with an avatar - an incarnation of God on earth - along with Rama and Krishna. However the idea is highly disputed. Islam maintains that Jesus never asserted he was a God or actively denied it. They consider the belief he is God to be a blasphemy, see Isa for more details on their position. Several historians, and some Christians, agree he did not claim to be God. They cite early Christian groups like Arianism and the Ebionites as support for this position. Finally, some maintain that the historicity of Jesus is doubtful or that he never existed.

I'll let that be discussed as that seems to be the main problem left.--T. Anthony 11:50, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I moved Jesus to a new list. I regret doing that in most respects, but I got tired of the "totally disputed" nonsense. Plus the new list is slightly goofy, but it's better than a complete capitulation on the issue. It is still a shameful capitulation though, but in least on the new list I could more comfortably write the article. Sigh, Wiki can be frustrating at times.--T. Anthony 09:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

polls and call-demand strategies

It is somewhat obvious that Wikipedians have encountered the results of a call-demand strategy which elicits words and phrases from subject/respondents. The accusatory question, "Do you think you're God?" has its place within the folklore of male-female relationships, and networks of pollsters have seized upon this accusatory use in its diminuitive form so as to compile an 'original' list of claimed modern-day 'gods'. Because the focus here is upon beliefs about the male 'superhero' gender, it can be assumed that concerns about the amount of damage such a person might cause are being demonstrated. Beadtot 10/19/2005 20:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what this means, but two women are listed. In principle Hatshepsut, who was a woman pharaoh who claimed divine ancestry in least, is implied to be on the list with the inclusion of pharaohs.--T. Anthony 08:34, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Alexander issue

Should Alexander be moved to the newly created, by me, List of people declared to be God?--T. Anthony 11:24, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I decided to do so. So what still bothers people? What needs improvement, clarification, etc?--T. Anthony 08:48, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Alternating colors

I decided to go back to the system of alternating colors. Three whites in a row looked wrong. Also I'm not entirely sure on Filipovich, but I did have a source. Lastly don't let me hog everything, others are free to add names provided you have credible sources.--T. Anthony 03:57, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Recommended reorganization

  • 1. Combine "List of people who have said that they are gods" with "List of people declared a deity". The distinction between the two lists is utterly meaningless, and most of the people on both lists are both claimed to have been deities and claimed to have said that they were deities. If there is a dispute over such claims, mention it in the description of that person, don't segregate the articles. If it's necessary to clearly distinguish those who definitely claimed godhood from those who may not have, or those who had a following from those who didn't, then do so with sections or asterisks, etc., not by making whole distinct pages. There are too many pages in this series already, the point of lists is to make it easy for one to scroll down through a lot of information or links on a certain subject, part of that is defeated when you have tons of lists on more or less the same topic. -Silence 16:16, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
  • 2. Both article names are very awkward, especially "List of people declared a deity". Move to "List of people who have been considered deities" or similar.
  • 3. Make it clear at the top of the article that the list is only for anyone (1) noteworthy enough to have an article on Wikipedia, and (2) significantly enough considered-to-be-a-deity/claimed-to-be-a-deity that the person's article text at least mentions it. If that's not obvious enough already, anyway; just about all Wikipedia lists have as an implicit rule that only people noteworthy enough to have an article merit listing. -Silence 16:16, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Most avatar claimants can be listed here too, certainly Sathya Sai Baba. [6] An avatar is by definition a descent of the divine into the human form. Note that traditional avatars like Krishna and Rama are generally considered deities. Andries 22:07, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Even better. I was looking for more ways to combine the other articles. "Avatar claimants" could easily be a subsection of the "List of people who have been considered deities" page. -Silence 22:14, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
May be that would be possible, but Sathya Sai Baba claims to be an avatar and to be God in the Judeo Christian tradition. Andries 22:20, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I had a reason for the declared list, it wasn't just irritation on the Jesus issue. There really are people where you can't say that they "said that they are god", but are nevertheless worshipped as such in some religion. Haile Selassie is the most well-known example. Still I'll work on it. Maybe I'll change the title to that list again, but on reflection I don't think I can merge most of it to this list. It really is a different concept and notion. (Although ideally Jesus belongs on this list and not the declared one. Enough sources from his era say he claimed it he validly belongs here, but the idea is extremely offensive to Muslims who will thus complain about it to no end)--T. Anthony 00:15, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Well I did merge after all by doing a title change. Let's see how this works.--T. Anthony 03:01, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

200-1600 AD

It's a good deal larger now and I think some were upset it was too short. I noticed though that from 200-1600 AD there's only two names.(Manco Capac and the Natchez, both of whom may easily get removed) Was there no claimants in that period? I was tempted to put Tang Taizong's chancellor instead of Guan Yu, but I don't think Wiki has a page on him. He is classed as a minor deity in charge of doorways. If it does have a page on him I might add him. I made it where there's two Romans so two Chinese shouldn't be that out of line.--T. Anthony 05:36, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Restructuring

Just stumbled on this article today, and have (tried to) read the Talk page and archives. The contents and title of this article appear to be deeply problematic.

While the concept of the article is an interesting notion, it needs structure and heavy editing.

A list of people loosely based around a theme does not constitute a coherent encyclopedic article, particularly when such a theme as 'deity' is disputed. Moreover, this is exacerbated by the need to "prove" that someone was "considered" something. While the subjects in the list are notable by Wikipedia's guidelines, there are no parameters by which we can guage how notable the degree of "consideration" is. Thus individuals such as Ted R. Kurts, placed on the same list as Jesus Christ appear at odds, and make such an article appear frivolous. In response to some archived discussions about this, this is not the same as saying that one was a deity, or more of a deity, rather than another. Rather, the comparison can be made thus: McDonald's makes billions of hamburgers a day, and a local burger diner make several thousand. Both are considered to be burger-producers and vendors, regardless of whether they are so: the burgers may be an illusion the consumer experiences, "Matrix-style." You get my point. We need to take scale into account: we cannot give four lines to 3000 years' history of Egyptian pharaohs; and 16 lines to 30 years' of Jesus lifetime, and 2000 years of "consideration [of him] as a deity". The alphabetical order in which the individuals appear makes the article confusing and disjointed.


Here are some suggestions. We could do one of them, or some of them, not necessarily in this order:


1. We chop the "list" up into centuries, so that we do not lump severely differing contexts in the same group. This way, the people will be chronologically grouped. Or we can list them by profession, as is the list of Polish Jews (link at the bottom of this Talk).

2. We list individuals, not groups. That is, the list of Pharaohs will need to be expanded.

3. We state their profession or title where possible, eg.

Caligula (12AD - 49AD) Roman Emperor Ted R. Kurts (b. 1959), former Linux programmer

and so on.

4. We tidy up the birthdates to only the years (we link to articles about an individual that will provide more specific information such as date and month).

5. We give an approximate number, or at least some estimation of followers, either in the present, or at the peak of "popularity". This will give readers some idea as to how different leaders differ in their "notability". (This may be problematic and will need further discussion)

6. Where a job description is inappropriate, eg. Jesus Christ, we make distinctions between "deities" of organised religion and so-called cult-leaders, possibly based on the above point where a dispute arises (eg. Although Jesus Christ was first a small cult-leader and was for most, if not all of his life, we consider him to be a deity of organised religion). Again, this may be problematic and may warrant further discussion.

7. I am sceptical that we need to provide a summary of how this person was considered a deity, as is done in the fourth column of the table. If these are notable people we are listing, surely linked articles about each individual should have some mention of their repute as a deity. It does not make sense for an article about a person to have no mention of his deity-like status (if we can speak of such a thing), and for him or her to appear in a list of "individuals considered as deities". If their individual articles do not mention some consideration of their being a deity, they should be struck off our list. This will solve problems relating to different contexts, meanings and POV of what it is to be or considered a "deity". Moreover, it will change a significant structure to the list: this list should be a list of "all people who have property X"; rather than "Theme X and people who seem to fall under it, and how they do so" where X is the property of "being considered a deity" - the latter is the current format of our list.

8. We link to pages about megalomania, and personality disorder in the case of individuals who have recently claimed god or god-like status. This is because, while it's cute to bung together people who have been considered deities, it is almost inconceivable that individuals such as Pharaohs and Ted Kurts were similar in their their claim to diety. It seems better encyclopaedic practice to provide all possible information about contemporary self-proclaimed Godliness. While it is challenging of conventional beliefs to include them in the same list where they share a comparable property, I think the purpose of this article should be to provide or link to as much information as possible, rather than create an ironic list.

I found this list very well structured, and think we could model (to a certain extent) our list on this: List of Polish Jews (FYI, in case you're wondering, I'm not one myself but used to date a guy of those origins) :)

Opinions/ideas, anyone?

Sathya Sai Baba must be re-added

I am aware that SSB is mentioned on the list of avatar claimants but he should be listed here too. Read the following where he clearly breaks the Hindu-Christian/Eastern-Western barrier with his claims of divinity. Brian Steel about Sathya Sai Baba (SSB's words in italics)

"Another major self-promotional statement which must have drawn gasps of delighted astonishment from devotees was SSB's revelation on Christmas Eve, 1972 that Jesus Christ had predicted his Advent (as God the Father, not as the Son of God) by pointing to a sheep and uttering the word "Ba-Ba". Part of the context is offered here for purposes of clarification:
"There is one point that I cannot but bring to your special notice today. At the moment when Jesus was merging in the Supreme Principle of Divinity, He communicated some news to his followers, which was interpreted in a variety of ways by commentators and those who relish the piling of writings on writings and meanings upon meanings, until it all swells up into a huge mess." (Sathya Sai Speaks, XI, 54:346)"
This is where Baba makes his striking claim (patently exaggerated, like so many other statements by or about SSB, but accepted and repeated by so many devotees):
"The statement itself has been manipulated and tangled into a conundrum. The statement of Christ is simple: 'he who sent me among you will come again!' and he pointed to a Lamb. The Lamb is merely a symbol, a sign. It stands for the Voice: Ba-Ba; the announcement was the Advent of Baba. 'His Name will be Truth,' Christ declared. Sathya means Truth. 'He will wear a robe of red, a blood-red robe.' (Here Baba pointed to the robe He was wearing.) 'He will be short, with a crown (of hair). The Lamb is the sign and symbol of Love.'
"Christ did not declare that he will come again. He said, 'He who made me will come again.' [Bold type added for a particularly bold and unequivocal claim.] That Ba-ba is this Baba and Sai, the short, curly-hair-crowned red-robed Baba, is come. He is not only in this Form, but he is in every one of you, as the dweller in the Heart. He is there, short, with a robe of the colour of the blood that fills it." (Sathya Sai Speaks, XI, 54:346)
"The power of Sai is limitless; It manifests for ever. All forms of 'power' are resident in the Sai palm." (Sathya Sai Speaks, XII, 38:227 - June 1974)

(quoted from Brian Steel's homepage) Andries 22:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Manco Capac- re-wording needed

The wording in the 'what' column for this guy is incomprehensible (to me). If you understand what this is supposed to mean, can you please re-word? ike9898 09:04, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Adding myself into it

If there is no objection, I'll add myself soon. Hell, I'm a God. Why should I ask for permission? __earth (Talk) 17:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The question is not whether you consider yourself god, its whether a sufficient number of other people consider you to be god to establish notability. I see your a deletionist, so I guess you won't mind if others delete your entry in the list. --Salix alba (talk) 18:56, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes. I'm a deletionist and I'm eager to delete this page =p __earth (Talk) 04:04, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Wallace Fard Muhammad

Isnt Wallace Fard Muhammad of the Nation of Islam considered by some to have been God/Allah in the flesh ? If so, shouldnt he be on the list -202.156.6.54

Muhammad

I don't mean the nation of islam guy, I mean the Muhammad. As in the founder of Islam. Since most people agree he existed, but only muslims think that he's divine, shouldn't he be on this list? Joffeloff 22:37, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I think they only consider him a prophet, and while I think their most important one, im pretty sure they don't consider him to be allah. Homestarmy 23:04, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Veneration of Muhammad as a divinity would be shirk. --FOo 00:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Muslims regard Muhammad as a mortal man who recieved wisdom from Allah. He is not thought to be devine and he did not claim to be devine.--TimVickers 21:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

What about a separate page.....

I think this is the best place to put this up. Why isn't there a page for humans-turned-gods, or visa versa? For example, many believe that Iphigenia, Agamemmnon's daughter in Greek mythology, became Hecate. Also, some say Dido was once a goddess. Helen of Troy was also worshipped as a goddess, too. I don't know much else about this subject, but I'd really like to start this page, so help is appreciated. Thanks. Mayukhers112 23:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

People described by others as Gods, but who denied it themselves

Would it be appropriate to include those people who others describe as deities, but who denied it themselves? Haile Selassie would fit into this category. So would Paul of Tarsus and Barnabas, who were briefly worshipped as Mercury and jupiter, respectively in Acts. Likewise, Wilfred Smith (for whom no entry exists yet) was described as a god by Aleister Crowley. although it was in order to stop him from heading a lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientalis. 65.12.115.249 00:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I thought Selassie was more indiferent to his supposed god-status than actually opposed to it. And a notorious con man and liar such as Crowley is not a reference at all; were we to accept his word, we would have to include Elvis and Pelé as well (people more qualified and more trustworthy than Crowley named those two "gods"). Luis Dantas 22:33, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

lmao

lolz dis article makes me laugh with some of its names

Caesar

I see that Roman Emperors such as Caesar and Augustus who were deified by the People and Senate of Rome are not mentioned, although there is a link to Apotheosis in the See Also section. However, I feel Caesar's case is unique as he claimed to be a direct descendant of Venus and at times flaunted his demigod status ("The omens will be good when I wish them so" etc.). Worthy of mention here? —Aiden 15:30, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Table arrangement

The table is kind of poorly arranged. When I first came to it, it appeared to be in no order. When I clicked the button to arrange by date, it arranged it by the absolute value of the date (i.e. 4AD, then 400BC, then 1950AD, then 4000BC), and when I clicked the button to arrange by notability, it merely alphabetized the "notability" column, which is absolutely useless. I'm not sure how, but this should be fixed. Perhaps just keep the list set as organized by date or name. Monsday 05:40, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

  • I filed a bug report in January. link. --Alterego 20:09, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Hassan-i-Sabah

I have removed this entry for now. I noticed that the cited book "A History of Secret Societies ( Google Books)" was written by Arkon Daraul. On a tip from an Amazon book review, this is a pen name for the author Idries Shah. He is perhaps not unbiased and the book makes odd claims such as Tibetan Buddhists being a secret society that bring the authors authority into question. --Alterego 17:33, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Hermes Trismegistus

His article does not cite its sources and does not make any case for his historicity. Improving the authority and scope of that article is the ticket into this one. --Alterego 00:02, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

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