Talk:Sophisticated theology

Jerry Coyne
Jerry Coyne has noticed us! "(...) the so-called “Sophisticated Theology™” (I notice that the term now has a nice RationalWiki entry, and I will greedily claim credit for the trademarked phrase). Walter Kaufmann on the gerrymandering of theologians" Proxima Centauri (talk) 08:03, 30 January 2013 (UTC)


 * If you check the references, you'll see where I told him about it and he claimed the TM - David Gerard (talk) 12:49, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

What Google displays
This 1st paragraph appears in Google when people search for ‘Sophisticated theology’. Well I feel it’s worthwhile to focus on what interests those who make a Google search right at the start of the article. Casual readers aren’t interested “(stylised Sophisticated Theology™)”. Jerry Coyne wants his credit and I’ve given it to him, just I put that all into a footnote slightly further on where Google won’t display it. Proxima Centauri (talk) 09:24, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Do we want the whole concept? Or is there somewhere else?
Fred Clark was talking about the same problem recently - but didn't use the term Sophisticated Theology. It's a serious issue, but is there another entry to go under or do we want to re-work this one to point out that although New Atheists coined the term it's a general issue. Neonchameleon (talk) 20:39, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a related issue (that the apologists are weasels) rather than this particular one (a claim of a sophisticated version that answers the objections to the simple version). Or perhaps a superset. - David Gerard (talk) 09:37, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I think that it's a sightly different issue, at least in the Ken Ham case. Christians are as likely to disagree with each other as they are are to disagree with athiests. Many share Ham-handed beliefs that the Earth is 10,000 years old.  Many others think that that is ridiculous though they may believe that God guided evolution via intelligent design or whatever.
 * Normally these two groups are able to keep a polite truce in the face of scientific evidence. But when Ken Ham gets up - claiming to speak on behalf of Christianity - one group suddenly finds a need to disown him or claim he is marginal. --Bob"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that." 15:55, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Attempted recovery
Goddamn how did this linger so long with the grammar and sense so for shit. I went through and added back a bit of stuff the howler monkeys at typewriters had splattered over it. There is at least one editor I hereby promise to blindly revert if they ever touch this thing again - David Gerard (talk) 16:58, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Anti-intellectual language
While the The God Delusion is a middlebrow book for good reason, there's no reason for RationalWiki to imply that anything not middlebrow is worthless and that nobody who's interested in it counts as a human being, which the language on this page does. My removal of it has been reverted without any explanation. --Anotherreader (talk) 16:31, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Let me put it another way: pseudo-sophistication is only funny if the people making fun of it know what real sophistication is. Calling Tillich "word salad" makes the article's valid defence of Dawkins' strategy seem like the insecurity of middlebrow people, which it isn't and shouldn't be open to accusations of being. "Who reads that shit anyway, amirite?" isn't what the rest of the article seems to be saying, and is a counter-productive line to take, if the aim is to demonstrate real sophistication. --Anotherreader (talk) 16:58, 30 January 2018 (UTC)