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Talk:Genesis creation narrative/Archive 18

< Talk:Genesis creation narrative
Latest comment: 12 years ago by Moe Epsilon in topic Requested move
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Requested move

Latest comment: 12 years ago280 comments66 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Before I continue further, I will reveal my religion so that any preconceived notion about my point of view is irrelevant. I am agnostic. Now, here are my findings based on this discussion:
  1. First, previous requests for renaming taken into account, the discussion is nearly identical to the past few discussions. With that in mind though, requesting a rename was not inappropriate given the title and that consensus can change.
  2. The article existed for five years without either "narrative" or "myth" in the title.
  3. Article titles, barring there being a common name (like in this situation), should reflect a neutral, scholarly and unbiased title.
  4. Genesis is a creation myth.
  5. There is differing opinions on whether the word "narrative" is scholarly/neutral and there is no consensus that it is or isn't.
  6. There is differing opinions on whether the word "myth" is scholarly/neutral and there is no consensus that it is or isn't.
  7. Google searches for the answer are not going to be representative of what the title should be. Non-scholar results are going to refer to Genesis however their religious values dictate or pending on their interpretation of the words they use. Even scholars don't have a consensus usage of the word one way or the other. They most likely use it based on their past experiences in discussing the topic, not in a way to reflect accuracy or unbiased opinion. Again, this is religion based, so you're not going to get consensus on that.
  8. The current title as it exists is not okay, because based on your interpretation of the word and/or your religious values (or lack thereof), it is not neutral. Any !votes saying the "current title is okay" is being oblivious to the fact this is being rehashed repeatedly.
  9. The article title changing to include the word "myth" would reflect current naming conventions of other creation myth articles. "Narrative" is not used in the title of many other articles in relation to creation myths (in fact, the only other article I have seen use the word "narrative" is also proposed here: Genesis flood narrative). However, since there is strong opposition to the word "myth", it appears unlikely to ever reach consensus on including it the title. There is also the point of myth could be just as weaselly as "narrative" is.
  10. Including the word "narrative" in the title is giving the article preferential treatment compared to other articles since "narrative" is not being used for other religious beliefs.
  11. There was no consensus on the alternative proposal, mainly due to the misconception that "there's nothing wrong with the current title."

In short, the result of the discussion was no consensus to move, but it is strongly recommended to achieve consensus by requesting a rename of the article not including the words "narrative", "myth", "story", or any variation. The best title I can recommend is Creation in Genesis. It is not recommended to do this move request immediately. Regards, — Moe ε 23:23, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

– As List of creation myths and List of flood myths show, articles about creation and flood myths from all other cultures have titles identifying them as creation and flood myths; only the stories of Genesis are privileged by being called "narratives" to avoid the colloquial connotation of "myth" with "untrue story." This special treatment is POV and violates the principle enjoined by Wikipedia:Article titles of using a title similar to those of similar articles. Cal Engime (talk) 01:52, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Requested move (arbitrary break 0)

(just so its easier to edit this top section only--Avanu)


Must we also avoid any appearance of promoting other ideologies? What sort of encyclopedic basis is this? I thought we simply worked from the premise that bringing knowledge and enlightenment to people was our goal. I didn't realize we also needed to avoid looking ideological. Rather than avoidance, isn't an adherence to a neutral tone our goal here? -- Avanu (talk) 06:09, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes, make it neutral, by using the same word, myth, for EVERY creation story.HiLo48 (talk) 06:46, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't understand what "middle" means here - is it as opposed to "extreme"? StAnselm (talk) 06:33, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
"middle America" sort of meaning the common man, everyman, regular Joe, suburban family that enjoys soccer or pizza rather than elite highbrows, typically associated with those in the middle of the United States rather than the coastal leftists/progressives. Sometimes disparagingly called flyover states or even red states. A "middle American Christian" would be a believer from this sort of background. -- Avanu (talk) 14:37, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The talk page guidelines at the top of this page say Restarting a debate that has already been settled may be taken as "asking the other parent", disruptive and even tendentious, unless consensus has changed or is likely to change. To start a new debate without reference to the previous debates (the consensus of April 2012 to move the page to its current location and the discussion of March 2012 which failed to obtain a consensus to move the page back) is an almost unforgivable oversight. I would suggest a speedy close here. StAnselm (talk) 05:53, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Five months is enough, and now you've referred to earlier discussions that's dealt with. All creation myth articles should use the word 'myth', and if anyone suggests it, I don't think we should be changing them all to narrative. This is a grown up encyclopedia, we can use grown up words (with appropriate explanations where needed). Dougweller (talk) 05:57, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Maybe you could help us understand what exactly a "grown up" encyclopedia is, as opposed to one that uses well-researched sources? Since no one is proposing that we declare the Earth to be flat, or that meat can spontaneously become flies, perhaps you can explain this "grown up" perspective that you have been so keen to speak about. -- Avanu (talk) 06:05, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support, of course. This nonsense has to end. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 05:59, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose - First the idea that Wikipedia:Article titles requires this title to conform to other creation stories is a 'myth'. And I am using the colloquial meaning there. There is so much room for interpretation there, you could pilot an Antonov An-225 through it. And while you might say it is special treatment to use a more neutral term of 'narrative' instead of the less neutral term 'myth', the logic on that statement eludes any understanding. What you actually seem to be pushing for is a more biased term, that supposedly carries an academic meaning that is somehow more appropriate. Per WP:Article titles, "The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms." Like it or not, an English Wikipedia is more likely to use an English-language common name that doesn't identify the Genesis story as a myth, compared with English-language sources about Popol Vuh or Pangu. It gets kind of annoying to see people wanting to change a well-understood item simply because they personally disagree with its veracity. -- Avanu (talk) 06:02, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • If you want to keep falling back on the statistics of "common usage" as a justification for not using myth in the title, whereas most of the other creation mythologies are titled as myths, then it might be time we take this up a notch and redefine the rules or bring about a wider discussion on these rules for this specific case. This has been a battleground for this article for far to long, and from an outside observer it's pretty clear that there is some bias going on here. #1 most followers in religion is Christianity, then Islam, both basically have the same creation myth, then comes atheists/agnostics, obviously no creation myth there, then Hinduism which doesn't really have a creation myth (cyclical universe), then Chinese creation myth, then Buddhism which again doesn't really have a creation myth (cyclical universe), then we get into the smaller indigenous religions. It's biased to have the largest religion's creation myth not labeled as such, but the next largest religion that has a creation myth be labeled as a myth. It's probably time that this be escalated up to actual policy changes, or a much wider discussion to take place about the appropriateness of this bias. — raekyt 06:32, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • It is incorrect to say that atheists and agnostics don't have a creation myth - by the academic definition of myth, everyone in existence must have some story explaining how they came into existence. Even Wikipedia's article on creation myth acknowledges that "All cultures have creation myths". Unless you are putting atheism and agnosticism up on a pedestal and treating their religion differently from others. You can't have it both ways. Are you suggesting we should also change the title of "Big Bang" to "Big Bang myth"? Ἀλήθεια 21:01, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Since you have read creation myth, then I should hardly have to explain that the Big Bang theory does not fit the definition on that page because is not a symbolic or sacred narrative, did not develop in an oral culture, and is not a story featuring the action of gods or any other characters. To illustrate the difference, here is an example of how the Big Bang theory might be expressed as a creation myth:
Ages ago, in the time before time, great Hegemonikon dreamt of an orderly universe with stars, planets, life, and people. Hegemonikon said to the Engineers, "let us form a primeval atom;" and Hegemonikon dictated to them the eternal laws of mathematics and physics. After 40 days and 40 nights of planning, testing, and implementation, Hegemonikon commanded the primeval atom: "Be." And the primeval atom expanded rapidly; and the Force became four, and matter became two; and after one hundred million years, the first star began to shine...
This is an example of science:
Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. This singularity signals the breakdown of general relativity. How closely we can extrapolate towards the singularity is debated—certainly no closer than the end of the Planck epoch. This singularity is sometimes called "the Big Bang", but the term can also refer to the early hot, dense phase itself, which can be considered the "birth" of our Universe. Based on measurements of the expansion using Type Ia supernovae, measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, and measurements of the correlation function of galaxies, the Universe has a calculated age of 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years. The agreement of these three independent measurements strongly supports the ΛCDM model that describes in detail the contents of the Universe.
But even if you don't see the difference, shouldn't you describe it as a Roman Catholic creation myth rather than an atheist/agnostic one? After all, it was developed by a priest. - Cal Engime (talk) 21:41, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes, but if we go by the technical definition given in the Creation myth article, Genesis is not a creation myth either: Genesis was formulated in a written, not an oral culture, and does not exist in multiple versions, but as a single canonical narrative -- that's why most scholarly literature uses terms like "Genesis creation account." Leeming in Creation Myths of the World: An Encyclopedia suggests that Genesis might be a "demythologized myth," but it's clear that the technical meaning of "myth" has to be stretched a little to apply it to Genesis. A similar situation arises with canonical Hindu texts, which are not described by "myth" in the article title either. -- 202.124.75.60 (talk) 10:58, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, anonymous friend. My point exactly. What these editors are proposing is that we treat all "faith-groups" exactly the same (of course, they want to exclude the "faith that there is no supreme being"), regardless of the technical form or distinctions of their particular creation story. For atheists (and many others, I'm sure), their creation story is a scientific theory based on hypothesis, for Christians (and many others, I'm sure), their creation story is a narrative based on canonical text. To be sure, the Genesis text more closely resembles the technical definition of myth than the Big Bang theory, but neither need be saddled with the title for the mere sake of consistency when there are more appropriate article titles already in use. Ἀλήθεια 12:28, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, but in fact the proposal doesn't even "treat all 'faith-groups' exactly the same" -- as you can see by looking at the Hindu articles, and some others that have been mentioned here. -- 202.124.75.60 (talk) 12:42, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
It's been massively disputed. For this article, see the debate in the archives from earlier this year. For other articles, like Diné Bahaneʼ, creation myth has already been altered to creation story. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 01:07, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Ironically, those Navajo creation stories are a better fit to the technical definition of "myth" -- 202.124.75.60 (talk) 10:58, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose for reasons covered in the previous discussions on this topic. FWIW, Google has "Genesis creation narrative" as the more common term (with "Genesis creation story" less common and "Genesis creation myth" even less common). Restricting the search to Google Scholar or Google books also finds that "Genesis creation myth" is the least common term. Indeed, "Narrative" is more appropriate for the Genesis account, as an item of literature. And newsflash: there is nothing specifically "middle," specifically "American," or specifically "Christian" about the Torah. -- 202.124.89.2 (talk) 06:26, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Then demonstrate it as false that the modern evangelical middle American Christianity is the dominate number of believers who take it as literal truth currently in the world. — raekyt 06:40, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Currently there would be more African Christians taking Genesis literally than the entire US population. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 06:48, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
And they got their doctrine from where? — raekyt 06:52, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
That's totally irrelevant to the name of this article, but since you ask: not from the USA. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 07:00, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
It's entirely relevant, and I'm going to have to see something beyond your word on that one. (population of US ~311m, # of Protestants in Africa = ~295m[1], can't imagine ALL of them take genesis as literal.) — raekyt 07:17, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I really think it's not relevant where the group being pandered to primarily resides, just that they are being pandered to. - Cal Engime (talk) 07:21, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Google searches aren't very helpful with this. Google web searches always gives us surprisingly large numbers of hits that come back to our articles, and of course most aren't to sources we'd use. In this specific case, Google books will include large numbers of self-published books. Probably very large numbers. Note that Xulon Press books are self-published, for instance, besides the usual iUniverse, Lulu, Authorhouse, etc. Dougweller (talk) 07:44, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
Really? On my count, those 4 (self)publishers make up less than 0.25% of the Google Books hits -- you're vastly underestimating the legitimate literature. Google Scholar searches are also pretty solid, and the generic Google Scholar and Google Books results are confirmed by looking at specific widely respected journals, as indicated elsewhere in this discussion. -- 202.124.75.60 (talk) 10:44, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support: The only argument that has ever been, or ever will be, put forth for the contrary position is that (some) Christians are offended by the word "myth" when applied to their own, well, myths. That is a disingenuous argument as none of those objecting feel even the slightest qualm in referring to, say, Hindu myths as such. In short, it's simple POV pushing. WP is based on scholarly sources, and we do not shy away from using scholarly terminology, even when, because of their own ignorance, some readers may misunderstand and feel offended by scholarly terms. WP is here to educate, not to mollycoddle hypersensitive infantile ignoramuses. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 06:38, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict)This is going to lead down the statistics road again, there's plenty of scholarly sources that avoid the use of myth, because there are plenty of universities that are Christian with Christian professors that publish from a Christian prospective. In this case I'd say those should be excluded from the statistics because they're biased to begin with, secular scholarly sources are probably the way to go if you want to look at how it's referred too. — raekyt 06:43, 8 September 2012 (UTC) (see below for what I mean, lol)
The scholarly literature is the scholarly literature. You can't exclude work by Christians, just as you can't exclude Hindus writing about Hindu religious texts. That would be bias. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 06:48, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
What I said was, and what is plainly obvious to anyone with any intellectual honesty, is that a christian writer is going to have an inherent built-in bias to their writing about their religion, and that those should not be used to determine how SECULAR (non-biased) ACADEMIA treats a subject. Of course it's biased to ignore these for CONTENT, but for determining something like this, they're not a good source. — raekyt 06:50, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Incorrect: it was argued above that "Genesis creation myth" was the less common term in scholarly writing. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 06:42, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

(ec)*Oppose per previous consensuses and all of the arguments presented there; I'll go through the archives to dredge them up if I have to as I don't want to sink another 30 hours in to this one (like I did the last RfCs on this page). I thought this shit was over. St John Chrysostom Δόξατω Θεώ 06:41, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

This shit will never be over while Christian bigots want their religion given special treatment in Wikipedia. HiLo48 (talk) 06:47, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Genesis is not specifically Christian; it's also (and was first) a Jewish religious text. And WP:CIVIL, please. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 06:51, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Civil? What rubbish. Don't deflect my argument. I repeated "this shit" because the previous (presumably good Christian) editor used the expression, and anybody demanding that their religion get special treatment simply IS a bigot. And yeah, sure, non-Christians have a similar story, but they don't try to shove it down others' throats, and distort Wikipedia. Logic. Please! (I know that's a vain hope where religion is concerned, but I can only try.) HiLo48 (talk) 07:01, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
That is not an excuse for using the clearly inflammatory word "bigot", however. And where is the logic in instantly assuming that only Christian fundamentalists, and not including Jewish fundamentalists, who often are at least as problematic? Common sense, if possible. Please! John Carter (talk) 18:29, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. Once again, there has never been a good reason for this article to have special treatment in referring to the topic as anything other than a creation myth. However, once again, the 'Christian majority' will probably gets its way.--Jeffro77 (talk) 07:01, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment. On Google Scholar, "Genesis creation myth" gets 123 hits in academic publications, "Genesis creation narrative" gets 238, and the synonyms "Genesis creation story" and "Genesis creation account" get 713 and 596 respectively. "Genesis creation myth" is not a common scholarly term. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 07:11, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I see you want to ignore my "intellectual honesty" comment and play the numbers game. A Christian writer isn't going to describe his religion's stories as myths... — raekyt 07:12, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
We have no way of telling the religious beliefs of those authors, nor should we try. We don't do picking and choosing among the scholarly literature. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 07:15, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Sure we do, we choose every day which sources to include and which to ignore when we write articles, we can't include everyone opinions and viewpoints of every published article in history on this subject. Secondly just doing a blind term search on something as broadly inclusive as Google scholar is hardly a statistic of value, Google indexes almost everything, and HUGE portions of what is indexed by Google scholar isn't what we'd consider reliable sources when it comes to academic peer-reviewed papers. You're throwing up a straw-man statistic that has no meaning or weight, since you can prove about anything with Google search numbers. — raekyt 07:21, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Most items on Google Scholar are reliable journal sources. And omitting relevant points of view, as you suggest, would of course be a breach of WP:NPOV. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 07:33, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
[citation needed] — raekyt 07:34, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
The majority of people writing about the Genesis creation story these days are going to be Christians. That's simple logic! How about a little intellectual honesty please? HiLo48 (talk) 07:20, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia operates by what reliable sources say. If you're proposing that all Christian and Jewish voices in the academic literature be somehow silenced, that's not in accordance with Wikipedia policy, and seems, at the very least, to involve considerable OR. The same holds for other creation stories: we should use the terms in the academic literature. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 07:29, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Then a literature review is needed to find what term is mostly used in relevant peer-reviewed journals, not just some blanket catch-all search term on a very inclusive search engine. — raekyt 07:31, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Google Scholar is mostly peer-reviewed journals. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 07:36, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Incorrect, it has a lot of peer reviewed journals, a lot that are not peer reviewed, it indexes what it considers "Academic" and that is FAR more inclusive than peer reviewed. Plus a peer reviewed journal publishes plenty of articles that are not themselves peer reviewed (not everything in a peer reviewed journal is peer reviewed). It has a lot of issues of not indexing and indexing too much, and that's not hard for anyone to find out with a little searching, or even just reading our page on it, Google Scholar. Plus doing a search and just counting the number of results tells you in ABSOLUTELY NO WAY how many of those papers are peer reviewed, they could all be or none of them could be, that means the number is irrelevant and useless for this discussion. — raekyt 07:40, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
On the About page for it it says, "Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites." It's pretty clear it's a bit more inclusive than STRICTLY ONLY peer reviewed papers. The argument is moot, search result numbers are irrelevant to determine usage in peer reviewed literature. — raekyt 07:44, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
As for a final nail in that coffin, here's the inclusion guidelines, [2]. It states: "The content hosted on your website must consist primarily of scholarly articles - journal papers, conference papers, technical reports, or their drafts, dissertations, pre-prints, post-prints, or abstracts." It's broadly inclusive, about anyone can create a website that looks to be pretty academic, say it's academic, and have it accepted for inclusion. — raekyt 07:48, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
But in fact, if you actually look at the Google Scholar hits, most of them are peer-reviewed journal articles. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 07:53, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Unless you critically look at every single hit, it's little more than WP:OR to say that. It's clear it indexes things that are outside our normal parameters of WP:RS for these subjects. — raekyt 08:03, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I searched Google Scholar for results in articles published in the Journal of Biblical Literature and the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament since 1980 and got 35 results for "creation story," 26 results for "creation account," 15 results for "creation myth," and 14 results for "creation narrative." - Cal Engime (talk) 07:55, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
For the Harvard Theological Review over the same period, I get "Genesis creation story" 25, "Genesis creation account" 23, "Genesis creation narrative" 13, and "Genesis creation myth" just 1. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 08:04, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
For The Journal of Religion over the same period, I get "Genesis creation story" 10, "Genesis creation account" 3, "Genesis creation narrative" 7, and "Genesis creation myth" zero. -- 203.171.196.158 (talk) 08:18, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
For a search over all journals in JSTOR, I get "Genesis creation story" 64, "Genesis creation account" 38, "Genesis creation narrative" 15, and "Genesis creation myth" 10. Once again, "Genesis creation myth" is the least-used term, and per WP:COMMONNAME, we shouldn't be using it. -- 202.124.89.231 (talk) 05:03, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
"Genesis creation story" seems to be the clear choice if we want to go with the most common name, but I still support consistency with the other articles. - Cal Engime (talk) 08:09, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
By number of adherents next largest religious belief system is Chinese creation myth, which by the wording of the opening sentence of that article clearly stands in stark comparison to this one. — raekyt 08:13, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I searched the first journal (Journal of Biblical Literature) at JSTOR for the term "myth" and got over 1000 articles that use that term, searching doesn't tell you much. Not everything in the journal is peer reviewed, it's one journal (and a Christian one at that), so it's hardly representative of the whole of academia for these subjects. The point is, searching a search engine doesn't give you very much information. — raekyt 08:01, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I think you may have done the search incorrectly. -- 203.171.196.112 (talk) 08:04, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
[3] — raekyt 08:06, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
As I thought. Searching for the single word "myth" on its own is no help at all to this discussion. Nobody is doubting that the word "myth" exists in English. We just don't think this article should be renamed to include it. -- 203.171.196.158 (talk) 08:22, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Nor is searching terms like: "Genesis creation story", "Genesis creation account", "Genesis creation narrative", and "Genesis creation myth" because there's a million ways you can write an article title or abstract to refer to this part of Genesis as a myth without hitting those specific terms. — raekyt 08:25, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
No, searching for potential article titles is relevant per WP:COMMONNAME. This debate is not about the use of the word "myth" in the article, it's about the article title. -- 203.171.196.158 (talk) 08:29, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Now your just being dishonest and obtuse, it's OBVIOUS that if you want to use WP:COMMONNAME as the argument for not using myth by a literature review in academic journals, then you have to actually review academic journals for how they refer to this mythology. Using VERY SPECIFIC search terms, as the only criteria of that search is PURPOSEFULLY ignoring the million other variations in English that can be used. You can't do a term search like and support that argument. You'd have to actually survey every article in these journals that is talking about the creation myth in Genesis to see if they use the term "myth" A better search term would be like "Genesis AND Creation AND Myth" vs. "Genesis AND Creation NOT Myth", if you can do such a search on the search engine. — raekyt 08:33, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Like: [4] vs [5] but as you can see from the results it's returning A LOT of stuff that doesn't have to do with the Genesis Creation mythology, just any article that has those words in it, so again about useless. The only way you can support WP:COMMONNAME with this kind of information is a MANUAL search of literature, and that would take A LOT of time, I think. — raekyt 08:42, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Also irrelevant. The appropriate searches are for phrases (as two of us did above), not for individual words that might not be occurring together. -- 203.171.196.158 (talk) 08:56, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
On the other hand, if you use sensible search terms like [genesis "creation myth"] instead of ["genesis creation myth"], then you find that the latter is overwhelmingly more supported than "narrative." –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:37, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
No, what's sensible is to use the entire article title as a search term. It's quite common for scholarly sources to say something like "the Genesis creation narrative is a creation myth," but that in fact supports the current article title. And splitting off "genesis" as a single word catches masses of anthropological literature where "genesis" is simply used to mean "beginning." You have to do searches of potential article titles as entire phrases. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 00:30, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The proposal argument appeals to WP:OTHERSTUFF in defense of a decidedly loaded list of titles when we should be having a plethora of move discussions about the other ones and citing WP:POVTITLE. Therefore, I am invoking WP:POVTITLE and a sprinkling of WP:COMMONNAME per above discussion in my opposition, and suggest that we snow-close this as no-consensus due to previous discussions that have wasted a lot of time. Elizium23 (talk) 07:51, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
And yet again, the Christians, who typically claim the moral high ground, are being intellectually dishonest by ignoring the explanations from others of the bias in "scholarly writing". Now wonder so many have moved away from such a hypocritical dogma. It's sad and sick. HiLo48 (talk) 07:58, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
ANd it is once again the same editor who makes no useful comment whatsoever lother than impugning others. Such irrational and counterproductive behavior is even more sad and sick. HiLo, is it even possible for you to engage in discussion with others without indulging in useless, and some might say mindless insults? John Carter (talk) 18:29, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I do not think comments on the merits of any religion are productive here. Let us confine our remarks to the application of naming policy to these two articles. - Cal Engime (talk) 08:04, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
If one religion (or the more irrational members of it) wants to be treated differently from others, how can we NOT discuss that religion? Logic and intellectual honesty please! HiLo48 (talk) 08:20, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
And, once again, act like an adult, please! John Carter (talk) 18:29, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I am being logical and intellectually honest when I remind you that Wikipedia neutrally reports what is found in reliable secondary sources. The sources have been provided above for your perusal. I will note that while you are screaming "BIAS!" I have implied my Support for the renaming of all the articles which label creation narratives a 'myth', because the common connotation of that word introduces a bias that implies the story is known to be false. All other things being equal, common sense dictates that we should err on the side of a positive agreement rather than a blanket accusation that all these "myths" are "untrue", why can't we label them all "narratives" and thus imply neither truth nor lies? And FYI, I am well-aware of my own personal biases and I steer clear of discussions where my contribution would be composed of emotional bias rather than logical arguments based on policy. Because I understand that while I have some ideological affinities in my real life, here I am just another Wikipedia editor, and my personal biases cannot stand against the NPOV policy which is sacrosanct. Elizium23 (talk) 08:56, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
"Several words that have very specific meanings in studies of religion have different meanings in less formal contexts, e.g., 'fundamentalism' and 'mythology'. Wikipedia articles about religious topics should take care to use these words only in their formal senses to avoid causing unnecessary offense or misleading the reader. Conversely, editors should not avoid using terminology that has been established by the majority of the current reliable and notable sources on a topic out of sympathy for a particular point of view, or concern that readers may confuse the formal and informal meanings." - Wikipedia:Neutral point of view Cal Engime (talk) 09:03, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I am bringing logic and intellectual rigour to the discussion. I know that it's not essential to faith and religion, but it is essential to Wikipedia. And we're on Wikipedia now, not in church. HiLo48 (talk) 08:24, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Those are names of deities, not titles or descriptions of myths. - Cal Engime (talk) 08:12, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
That is irrelevant, because they are still listed under List of creation myths. I mean if you want to get stupid technical... The Genesis creation narrative is Genesis 1 and 2 text.  — Jasonasosa 08:21, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Of course it's relevant. If there were enough information about Mbombo available for an article specifically about the creation myth, it would be titled "Kuba creation myth." As it is, many of those links at least lead to a section that is headed "creation myth," and whether or not "myth" is in the title of the article about Mbombo would only be relevant if the proposal were to, say, move Yahweh to Yahweh myth. - Cal Engime (talk) 08:27, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, so? What's the difference? If you are going to do it for one... do it for all of them as you've just tried to point out User:Cengime.  — Jasonasosa 08:31, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I would love to. I'll change all the piped links on that page to say "[Culture] creation myth" tomorrow if no one objects. - Cal Engime (talk) 08:34, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Go for it.   — Jasonasosa 08:39, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't think that would be a good idea, actually. There might be objections to renaming/editing Diné Bahaneʼ, which is a creation story, for example. And you shouldn't pre-empt the discussion we're having now. -- 203.171.196.158 (talk) 08:44, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
There may well be objections, but I don't see the significance of it being a "story." Creation story is just a redirect to creation myth, and two of the article's sources call it a myth in the title. - Cal Engime (talk) 08:57, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
It certainly provides one counterexample for the suggestion that all other Creation stories have "myth" in the title (or even in the lede). -- 203.171.196.17 (talk) 09:42, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
focusing on the one article that agrees with your position and ignoring the overwhelming majority that don't is a form of confirmation bias; ignoring the misses but focussing on the hits. The Diné Bahaneʼ says creation story until the "white people move theirs" [6]. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:08, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Fair enough, but then let's admit that Genesis is not "the only exception" to having "myth" in the title. In any case WP:OTHERSTUFF is a poor argument, and WP:COMMONNAME a better one. Each creation story should be named according to the scholarly consensus for that story. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 00:10, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support creation myth is the common term and is prevalent in reliable sources. The only reason this article is being treated differently from other creation myths is Christian exceptionalism. I'd ask that the religious try to leave their religion at the door when editing wikipedia and work towards neutrality. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:05, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
That's a little disingenuous, given your comments about maintaining an exception for Diné Bahaneʼ a few lines up. Why don't we respect the scholarly consensus, which does not use "Genesis creation myth," per the statistics that have been discussed? -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 00:24, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The word "myth" makes a judgement, and the vast majority of writers on this subject, as well as readers interested in this subject, do not use terminology that makes this judgement, per Ngram and Insights. Both "Creation in Genesis" and "Genesis creation story" are far more common than either the current or proposed titles. A Bible reference would refer to this subject simply as "creation." Several editors are confusing of issue of whether the subject is a creation myth with the issue of whether this is the most common name of the subject. Kauffner (talk) 14:26, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
That ngram plot is certainly compelling evidence. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 00:44, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support per WP:RNPOV. The argument that "myth" is "a judgement" or is offensive in any way is contradicted by not just any Wikipedia policy, but one of the core content policies, which says that "...editors should not avoid using terminology that has been established by the majority of the current reliable and notable sources on a topic out of sympathy for a particular point of view, or concern that readers may confuse the formal and informal meanings." That the article's topic deals with a religion followed by many Wikipedians does not make it an exception to NPOV. - SudoGhost 15:00, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Though "Genesis Creation Story" is preferable over the other two—Google Scholar also prefers "Genesis creation story" by a very wide margin (Genesis creation story/narrative/myth = 712/235/123). "Genesis creation story" fulfills the first and main parameter at at WP:Article titles: "article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources." It also wins out on "Naturalness" and "Recognizability." I haven't looked through the archives on this, but has there ever been a move request to "Genesis creation story?" First Light (talk) 15:17, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. While I appreciate the arguments at previous discussions on the topic, I've never found our reasoning for this title too compelling. The strongest argument for opposing has always been COMMONNAME, but then we have often used unfiltered search results which turned out to be mostly similar. I mean, the difference between 120 hits and 230 hits on a search engine is not worth discussing, IMO. If the whole academic community referred to this as "the GC narrative", my opinion would be different, but the fact is that this is referred to as a myth very commonly in secular sources, and commonly still even in religious ones. So for me, COMMONNAME doesn't really resonate as a strong reason to break convention for just one religion. It seems to me we can source "the GC myth" very well, and it fits with all our other articles on the topic, which means it won't create surprise for our readers searching for the topic, or finding it listed among a multitude of other "... myth" articles. Consistency and sourcing are important to me, not so much splitting hairs over similar (unexamined) google hits.   — Jess· Δ♥ 15:50, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Are you kidding with this? With all of the disputes and confusion that there has been, this would just compound it, not make things better. And this is not about "religion". The only ones bringing up religion are those in support. --Musdan77 (talk) 16:34, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. "Creation myth" and "flood myth" are common usage. Far from a move consisting of a choice of the uncommon usage in the name of "political correctness", the current title is a choice of the uncommon usage in order to coddle users who insist that their myth is the one that's true and can't handle the idea that anyone else might think differently. As other users have pointed out, "myth" is nonjudgmental. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:37, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support scholarly approach is always best.Moxy (talk) 17:01, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
David Adams Leeming (25 January 1996). A Dictionary of Creation Myths. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-510275-8.
Tamra Andrews (18 May 2000). Dictionary of Nature Myths: Legends of the Earth, Sea, and Sky. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-513677-7.
Claus Westermann (1 May 1994). Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-9500-2.
More scholarly books use "Genesis creation narrative" than "Genesis creation myth." This book uses "Genesis creation narrative," for example. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 23:48, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
What game are you playing? The title has mythology in it, so the TITLE of that book describes it as a myth, it doesn't matter if what other language you can quote mine out of it! — raekyt 00:37, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
This debate is not about whether the Genesis creation narrative is described as a myth, it's about what it's called. And, in scholarly literature, it's very seldom called "Genesis creation myth." Even books describing it as a "creation myth" (like the one I mentioned) almost always call it "Genesis creation narrative" or "Genesis creation account" or "Genesis creation story." There are good scholarly reasons for this; it reflects the fact that the "Genesis creation narrative" is, unlike many other creation stories, a canonical written text. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 00:55, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I very much disagree with your assertion that it's often referred to as narrative or account and not myth, searching that same book for "creation myth" finds FAR more instances of it {[7] link) and it's all talking about basically the same mythology in various Jewish texts, and in several of those instances DIRECTLY referencing Genesis 1 as a creation myth. So I think you finding a few examples of books/papers using narrative/account is giving you a little confrontational bias, and not allowing you to see the overall picture. — raekyt 01:12, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Since you're having trouble reading, let me say that again: This debate is not about whether the Genesis creation narrative is described as a myth, it's about what it's called. And, in scholarly literature, it's very seldom called "Genesis creation myth." Even books describing it as a "creation myth" (like the one I mentioned) almost always call it "Genesis creation narrative" or "Genesis creation account" or "Genesis creation story." There are good scholarly reasons for this; it reflects the fact that the "Genesis creation narrative" is, unlike many other creation stories, a canonical written text. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 01:17, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
In any case, citing individual books is no help; what's relevant is the statistics quoted above. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 01:23, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Articles that would have to become subarticles of "Primeval History" in this solution to cover it comprehensively:
Naturally, Primeval History would itself be a subarticle of Book of Genesis. In fact, I think this would be a great improvement in organisation of these articles even if the present titles are retained. - Cal Engime (talk) 23:55, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
That's a totally misguided suggestion. The article would be much too large, and mixing Enûma Eliš and Diné Bahaneʼ with the Genesis account would be inappropriate and unhelpful. In any case, that would be a separate merge discussion that would stand no chance of success. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 00:04, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I am not saying that these articles should be merged, much less with Enûma Eliš and Diné Bahaneʼ. I'm saying that an article should be written in summary style about this whole section of Genesis, and the individual pages should simply have a "Primeval History" sidebar added at the top. - Cal Engime (talk) 00:07, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
You're free to write any article you want. I don't think that's germane to the current move debate. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 00:14, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I think it's germane if we can avoid the need for titles that describe these two subjects as myths, stories, narratives, or anything else. - Cal Engime (talk) 00:18, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
So you're saying you want to withdraw this move proposal and propose something different? If not, what are you proposing? -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 00:36, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I am proposing that we try to achieve compromise and consensus, and not be completely inflexible in our goals. - Cal Engime (talk) 01:07, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
If you really believed that, you would have respected the hard-fought consensus in the status quo. -- 203.171.197.61 (talk) 01:13, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
The status quo may be hard-fought, but it is not a consensus. A majority of editors, or nearly a majority of editors, think the article needs to be moved. - Cal Engime (talk) 01:45, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm referring to the past consensus, when the article was moved here. Didn't you search the archives? -- 202.124.88.253 (talk) 01:55, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
That was over two years ago. Consensus can change. - Cal Engime (talk) 02:01, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
It hadn't changed this April. -- 202.124.88.253 (talk) 03:10, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes it had. There was no consensus in April. - Cal Engime (talk) 03:23, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't think this would solve anything, even if I'm understanding it correctly, which I think I'm not. The issue here is special treatment of the wording of this article over other mythologies, simply because the bulk of English speakers/editors are themselves Christians and think this story is true and the word myth bothers them. — raekyt 00:41, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
This is no different than many widely discussed page move requests. They generally should be given at least seven days for discussion, and if it's closed as "no consensus," then that wouldn't be all that uncommon. So far it's been open barely 24 hours. First Light (talk) 03:52, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure what consistency you're talking about; most articles on creation stories don't have "myth" in the title (sometimes not even in the lede). In any case, this article is a little different from many others, in that it discusses a single canonical written text, not a corpus of oral legends. And WP:COMMONNAMES trumps the other arguments, "Genesis creation myth" is the least-used term in the scholarly literature (see above stats) and therefore should not be used. -- 202.124.89.231 (talk) 07:18, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
The Judeo-Christian creation myth is a corpus of oral legends, and this article should be expanded to cover versions of the myth recorded in Legends of the Jews. - Cal Engime (talk) 20:54, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Question: For those who say "myth" is a non-judgemental or neutral word, what word or words would you use to define the concept that "myth" encapsulates? -- Avanu (talk) 05:04, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Myth, creation myth, and flood myth are all well defined with sources in the relevant articles. - Cal Engime (talk) 05:07, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Defined well, are they? From Myth: In folkloristics, a "myth" is a sacred narrative usually explaining how the world or humankind came to be in its present form, "a story that serves to define the fundamental worldview of a culture by explaining aspects of the natural world and delineating the psychological and social practices and ideals of a society". Many scholars in other fields use the term "myth" in somewhat different ways; in a very broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story or, in casual use, a popular misconception or imaginary entity. Because the folkloristic meaning of "myth" is often confused with this more pejorative usage, the original unambiguous term "mythos" may be a better word to distinguish the positive definition from the negative.
Even the article on Myth acknowledges that the word is "often confused with this more pejorative usage". -- Avanu (talk) 05:33, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
This isn't the Simple English Wikipedia, we don't dumb things down to the lowest common denominator of our readership. Maintaining high academic standards in language usage not only makes this resource more credible, it also serves as a learning opportunity to those people who may not understand a term, might make them go look it up, learn about it. Just because some people don't understand the term myth, doesn't mean we shouldn't use it. Really though I think it's a fight to keep this specific myth differentiated from other creation myths because of personal beliefs of some, that's where the bias comments come in. Academically this is a myth and that's how we should label and describe it here. We don't give Christianity's belief's a pass on Wikipedia, look at Intelligent Design and Evolution, we clearly take the side of academia and science, and this should be no different. — raekyt 05:59, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
OK, so why not say "sacred narrative" or "traditional story"? You claim to say the academic interpretation is the preferable one. As such, "The sacred narrative of creation from Genesis" would work just fine, wouldn't it? It uses the academic definition of myth. -- Avanu (talk) 06:27, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Absolutely not, what's the problem with using myth if your ok with using the definition of it? If you can agree on the definition of the word, then what is the problem of using the word? We're all adults here... Unless there's some other motivation why you wouldn't use the best academic word to describe it? — raekyt 06:39, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
As stated above, in a search over all journals in JSTOR, we get "Genesis creation story" 64 times, "Genesis creation account" 38 times, "Genesis creation narrative" 15 times, and "Genesis creation myth" 10 times. "Genesis creation myth" is clearly not the most common academic term, and per WP:COMMONNAME, we shouldn't be using it. Unless there's some other motivation why you wouldn't use the best academic phrase to describe it? -- 202.124.89.231 (talk) 07:24, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I think you missed my point, Raeky. I'm asking you to explain why "The sacred narrative of creation from Genesis" would be a bad alternative. I'm not advocating for that title. I'm asking you why you say you would oppose it. -- Avanu (talk) 13:32, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Going by the WP:CRITERIA, "Genesis creation myth" would be more natural, more concise, and (unless you want to rename all the other articles to "Sacred narrative of creation among the Chinese", etc.) more consistent. - Cal Engime (talk) 21:05, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Do a search of any general publication like WSJ or London Times or Time Magazine or Newsweek for the word "myth." In the US it is commonly used in such publications to characterize a quotation even from the President. I challenge you to find even one usage that fits the technical definition of "myth" as writing style or mode. You will find that it virtually always refers to an alleged untruth, and therefore is quite clearly POV. AFAProf01
  • Those are not academic reliable sources, therefore have no bearing on this discussion. Argumentum ad populum isn't really a good argument to make. Wikipedia strives to be an academic resource, and uses the language of academia, not local news rags. — raekyt 06:09, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose The point is common usage. Even the Encyclopedia Britannica doesn't say "myth." Here is its introduction to Genesis:
  • Genesis, Hebrew Bereshit (“In the Beginning”), the first book of the Old Testament. Its name derives from the opening words: “In the beginning….” Genesis narrates the primeval history of the world (chapters 1–11) and the patriarchal history of the Israelite people (chapters 12–50). The primeval history includes the familiar stories of the Creation, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, and the Tower of Babel. The patriarchal history begins with the divine promise to Abraham that “I will make of you a great nation” (12:2) and tells the stories of Abraham (chapters 12–25) ─AFA Prof01 (talk) 06:32, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I struck your second oppose, and you need to learn to WP:SIGN your posts here, and indent, make our lives a lot easier. Looks like your just quoting the article on "Genesis" not an article about the creation myth, which doesn't look like they have a specific one for that [8], we don't say myth in the title of our article on the book either, Book of Genesis, so a pointless argument... — raekyt 06:37, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • One of the proposed actions is "Genesis creation narrative → Genesis creation myth". My point is that Encyclopedia Britannica avoids using the offensive and ambiguous word "myth" by using terms like "narrates", "story", and "history". "Myth" gives every appearance of pushing a POV, and as said below, it is getting harder and harder to assume good faith. ─AFA Prof01 (talk) 21:49, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
It isn't terribly offensive if no one takes offense. But in cases where people can take offense, I ask again, if "myth" just means "sacred narrative", what is the problem? You guys have said it is shorter, ok... other stuff has the word "myth", what else? -- Avanu (talk) 23:05, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • As has been noted several times, Wikipedia policy explicitly says that possible confusion on readers' part of academic and informal meanings should not be a reason to avoid "mythology" and similar terms. See WP:RNPOV. - Cal Engime (talk) 21:13, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Strongly oppose. Un-freaking-believable. Do we have to do this over and over and over again? The biggest argument I've seen here is that all other creation stories are called "creation myth" in their titles. That's a patently false claim that's been rebutted multiple times. The common term for this particular creation story is "creation narrative". The people trying to change it for the umpteenth time are pushing a POV, and they really need to stop. It's getting harder and harder to assume good faith on their part. - Lisa (talk - contribs) 14:58, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

I believe it has been established that the common term is "creation story," with "creation narrative" lagging behind "creation account." - Cal Engime (talk) 20:19, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
And "creation myth" is behind all of them, according to reliable sources. Which explains why some people see this attempted move as POV putsching. First Light (talk) 21:48, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Some other people are saying that the reliable sources should be discounted in this case because they are mostly written by Christians, so following them would effectively be allowing Christians to dictate how their creation myth will be written about. Furthermore, titling these articles so distinctly differently from all the others titled "X creation/flood myth" creates the appearance that Wikipedia favours Judeo-Christian beliefs no matter what the most common name is. "Genesis creation myth" may not be as common as "Genesis creation story," but it is both attested in reliable sources and consistent with the other articles. - Cal Engime (talk) 22:46, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Even if one could prove that some of those Reliable Sources were written by practicing Christians, there is no history, precedent, or policy that would support bias against them based on their religion. Reliable Sources are Reliable Sources. I hope we don't start branding authors (and Wikipedia editors) with their religion - though I'm starting to see some of that here. First Light (talk) 23:20, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Who can argue with that fine locution? I thought I heard a bit of Churchill or Shakespeare in your word. And the logic is impeccable. -- Avanu (talk) 20:44, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
My "oppose" applies to both. I assume it's the same for everybody else that's !voted. -- 202.124.89.138 (talk) 08:21, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Lexicographical comment. In this recurring NPOV debate over titles for Genesis, both sides are making unverified assertions about semantic neutrality and word collocations. Is narrative "more neutral" than myth? Are myth connotations "more negative"? Is it "neutral" to use creation myth for some religions and creation narrative for others? Rather than relying upon our subjective idiolectal opinions, we can utilize linguistic data concerning connotation, semantic differential, and collocation. The following two resources provide a start.
The SentiWordNet is "a resource for supporting opinion mining applications obtained by tagging all the WordNet 3.0 synsets according to their estimated degrees of positivity, negativity, and neutrality" (P, O and N).
  • NOUN myth#1 a traditional story accepted as history; serves to explain the world view of a people P: 0 O: 1 N: 0
  • NOUN narrative#1 (and narration#1 tale#1 story#1) a message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events … P: 0 O: 1 N: 0
  • ADJ mythic#1 relating to or having the nature of myth … P: 0 O: 1 N: 0
  • ADJ mythological#1 mythologic#1 mythical#1 mythic#2 fabulous#2 based on or told of in traditional stories; lacking factual basis or historical validity … P: 0 O: 0.75 N: 0.25
  • ADJ narrative#1 consisting of or characterized by the telling of a story … P: 0.125 O: 0.625 N: 0.25
The Oxford Dictionary of Collocations lists the most common English word groupings:
  • ADJ-NOUN myth (1. "story from ancient times") – ancient, classical | religious | Christian, Greek, Norse, Roman, etc. | creation (= that explains how the world began)"
  • ADJ-NOUN narrative – popular | coherent | simple, straightforward | complex, detailed | chronological, sequential | first-person, second-person, third-person … | fictional, prose | film | historical | biblical
  • NOUN story – mythical, mythological | adventure, Bible, biblical, crime, detective
Discussion based on reliable dictionaries can help us achieve a more rational consensus. Keahapana (talk) 00:21, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Don't forget probably the most popular dictionary of the English language. Merriam-Webster's says:
myth - noun \ˈmith\
1a: a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon b: parable, allegory
2a: a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially: one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society <seduced by the American myth of individualism — Orde Coombs>
2b: an unfounded or false notion
3: a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence
4: the whole body of myths
Looks to me like your "opinion mining applications" completely leave out definitions 2b and 3. But maybe I'm just making unverified assertions. -- Avanu (talk) 01:22, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
You might also take a look at this quote from the Dictionary of English Folklore
Myths are "stories about divine beings, generally arranged in a coherent system; they are revered as true and sacred; they are endorsed by rulers and priests; and closely linked to religion. Once this link is broken, and the actors in the story are not regarded as gods but as human heroes, giants or fairies, it is no longer a myth but a folktale. Where the central actor is divine but the story is trivial ... the result is religious legend, not myth." - J. Simpson & S. Roud, "Dictionary of English Folklore," Oxford, 2000, p.254
According to this, those proposing "myth" would more likely be led to the term "folktale", since they regard the academic opinion to be superior in this instance to the religious opinion. -- Avanu (talk) 01:30, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
We don't pretend that this mythology is true anywhere else on wikipedia, specifically in all the creation-evolution articles, so why not drop all pretense here... Myth is the most neutral word. Obviously if we treated this as litteraly true here, then Young Earth Creationism wouldn't be written the way it is. Be honest, this objection is clearly religiously motivated right? — raekyt 03:12, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
"Myth" isn't 'the most neutral' word. Actually if I had to pick one of the various ones that have been thrown around, myth, story, folktale, or narrative, then narrative wins out for neutrality. Even the word "story" has an element of "this is false" to it in certain contexts. The word narrative is nice because it takes the focus out of Wikipedia's voice and essentially says "this is someone telling us this", which implies nothing about whether it is true or false. -- Avanu (talk) 17:12, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
If this encyclopedia starts using academic sources instead of religious sources the next thing you know we'll be telling people that the demonic possession theory of mental illness isn't accurate or that the earth is more than 10k years old. Obviously this is unacceptable. Support move to the more accurate title. Sædontalk 02:19, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes, Avanu is correct that myth (like narrative) has other less common meanings, but modern lexicography and corpus linguistics are based on actual word usage. The WordNet article and this link explain the lexicographical research and methodology for SentiWordNet. If you want to find reliable verification to support your assertions, there are many online corpora like the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Also, here's a relevant question. Dictionaries list word meanings either by oldest usage first (e.g., Merriam-Webster's) or by most common usage first (the American Heritage College Dictionary). I've looked up myth in both historical and general-purpose English dictionaries and they all list the "traditional story" sense first followed by the "common misconception" sense. Can anyone find a reliable dictionary that gives the derived colloquial meaning first? Keahapana (talk) 01:17, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Requested move (arbitrary break 1)

Also, if we start using logic like that, Sædon, we won't get anywhere. Reducing the argument to an unreasonable extreme doesn't solve the problem. The word "myth" has undeniable negative connotations. It isn't just a neutral word. Being a bit polite isn't the same as rewriting our psychology texts or geological history. -- Avanu (talk) 05:35, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
By describing a constructive contribution as an unreasonable extreme, you are showing your own massive bias. We simply CANNOT give Christianity a privileged status here. HiLo48 (talk) 07:55, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
First, it's not a "privileged status" status to follow what the scholarly sources call it (which is almost never "Genesis creation myth," as proved by statistics from journals quoted above). Second, even if that wasn't so, everybody's fine with Diné Bahaneʼ not being a "creation myth," so there would still be no "privileged status" for this article. Third, this is not a "Christian" article, as a brief read of the lede would show. -- 202.124.89.138 (talk) 08:17, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Your response is insulting to everyone who has pointed out that sources in this case are going to be a biased sample from which wise encyclopaedia editors must choose. We don't treat numbers of sources as votes. Repeating a bad and refuted argument doesn't help your case, and looks like desperation to give your religion special treatment. Can you actually conceive how POV that would look to believers in other creation stories? HiLo48 (talk) 08:38, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
First, you have no idea what my religion is. Second, I see you've dodged my second point above. Third, the scholarly literature is the scholarly literature. Wikipedia policy forbids going through the Harvard Theological Review or The Journal of Religion and censoring articles written by members of groups that you happen to be bigoted against. First they censored the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they censored the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they censored the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they censored me and there was no one left to speak out for me. -- 202.124.89.138 (talk) 08:51, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Oh come off it. Drop the philosophical crap. This isn't about censorship. It's about wise use of sources. We DO NOT include stuff just because it's sourced. And I have no idea what a Diné Bahaneʼ is, apart from a case of very obscure WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. I still cannot see why one mainstream religion should be treated differently from others, nor do I think the folks in other religions would think much of that either. I can't imagine a non-Christian arguing the case you are arguing. It's pure irrational and inflammatory bias.HiLo48 (talk) 08:58, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
You're proposing that the overwhelming bulk of scholarly literature be ignored because it might be written by people that you hate. It's hard to respect that argument, and WP:NPOV specifically forbids that kind of censorship. And, while I agree that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is usually a poor argument, the existence of Diné Bahaneʼ, Hiranyagarbha#Creation, and other articles proves that this article is not some kind of exception to the alleged "rule" that's been mentioned. And why isn't there a Hindu creation myth? Why is the section on Islamic creation called "Islamic creation belief"? It's difficult to believe that there is anything to this proposal except anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry. -- 202.124.89.138 (talk) 09:25, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Obviously you didn't read one of my initial posts here, there isn't a Hindu or Buddhism creation myth article because they don't have creation myths, they believe in an endless cyclical universe, the next largest religion by followers besides the Genesis creation believers is the Chinese creation myth, which we do have an article for. — raekyt 10:37, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
If you'd bothered clicking on Hindu creation myth, you'd see it redirects to the Hindu creation story (yes, there is one), but that the article doesn't have "myth" in the title. And, although it's irrelevant, per Major religious groups, the three largest religious groups are in fact Christianity (about 2.1 billion people), Islam (about 1.6 billion people), and Hinduism (about 1 billion people). Clearly, you lack the knowledge of world religions necessary for debates like this. -- 203.171.196.15 (talk) 11:37, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Progress thus far: Supports = 16 (57%), Opposes = 12 (43%). Main argument of Opposers is WP:COMMONNAME and "myth" is too loaded of a word. Main argument for Supporters is "myth" is more neutral and academic and current naming seems biased compared to other religions. — raekyt 10:44, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Clearly, from the statistics, "Genesis creation myth" is not the academically used phrase, and equally clearly, given the terminology in the Muslim and Hindu articles (take a look at where Hindu creation myth goes), it's the move which would be biased compared to other religions. -- 203.171.196.15 (talk) 11:37, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Please don't count "votes". That proves nothing, and is not what we do on Wikipedia. Quality of argument is what matters. HiLo48 (talk) 10:50, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Obviously consensus doesn't work by votes, but votes is a good measurement to judge how things are headed, ultimately whoever gets the fun task of closing this, which probably will have to request outside party to do it, will have to weigh the arguments against eachother. — raekyt 10:57, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes, Raeky, you might want to consider expanding the rationale behind your support !vote. StAnselm (talk) 11:00, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
I think the numerous comments since then have expounded on my views quite sufficiently... The whole of everyone's arguments should be weighed, not JUST what they said in their !vote comment, obviously. — raekyt 11:11, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
In any case, it will be a difficult job closing it, and it may well end up at Wikipedia:Move review. Which is one reason I objected to the move proposal in the first place. StAnselm (talk) 11:23, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Why is that a reason to object? HiLo48 (talk) 11:28, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
The note at the top of the talk page says, Restarting a debate that has already been settled may be taken as "asking the other parent", disruptive and even tendentious, unless consensus has changed or is likely to change. There was no good reason to believe the consensus would change. The was no good reason to believe that the March Wikipedia community got it wrong. So having the rebate all over again wastes a lot of people's time, at all levels. StAnselm (talk) 11:42, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
You've just changed tack completely, and totally ignored my question. You are not debating here. Just randomly throwing around things you hope will score points. If I was judging quality of argument... HiLo48 (talk) 11:55, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
The community did not get it wrong, right, or anything else in March. The discussion was not closed with a consensus to keep, it was closed with no consensus. - Cal Engime (talk) 16:41, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support It would be POV to describe myths from other religions as so but put Christianity on a pedestal over other religions. Why should biblical stories be given privileged status to ancient Grek religions or Buddhist or Hindu "narratives"? Last time i checked wikipedia was a neutral encyclopedia - not a theocratic blogsite. Does the fact we call ancient Greek gods such as Athena and Zeus "mythology" mean we make fun of ancient Greeks? No. The term myth has quite a flexible definition. As far as i know the highest quality academic sources describe genesis as a myth. Pass a Method talk 06:52, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
No one here is asking for Christianity or Judaism to be put on a pedestal. That's what biased people are taking 'politeness' to mean. There is no avoiding the absolute fact that "myth" is commonly known as "false". The current wording is more neutral and is hardly pedestal-worthy. It is easy to understand, and while it doesn't have the warmth of the word "story", it conveys the meaning just fine. "Myth" supposedly means "sacred narrative", and I hardly see how calling something potentially "false" (via the word "myth"), or "sacred" (via the term "sacred narrative") would be *more* neutral than the current word "narrative". But you can't convince some people, I suppose. (By the way, another meaning of the word "myth" is "traditional story", but I bet the pro-"myth" people here would find fault with that.) Sadly, simply being willing to leave the compromise language in place that we have now seems unacceptable to the pro-"myth" people. -- Avanu (talk) 13:00, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Furthermore, the Hindu equivalent article doesn't have "myth" in the title, and Buddhist creation myth doesn't even exist. Also, the statistics above show that the phrase "Genesis creation myth" is very seldom used by academic sources. -- 203.171.196.15 (talk) 13:03, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. For what it's worth, I would recommend we just eliminate the contentious word completely, and go with Genesis creation. The first sentence could then contain the words narrative, story, and myth. It seems that several years into this battle, no one is willing to concede any ground, so ultimately it is going to come down to a somewhat arbitrary decision by the closing admin, which will undoubtedly raise the ire of one large group of editors or the other. I think the article started out as "Creation in Genesis", which was a perfectly apt title. I think editors will be hard-pressed to argue that the word "narrative" itself is non-neutral, so the arguments all boil down to trying to judge people's rationale for preferring that term. No one can decisively demonstrate that either word is used as the title for this particular subject so frequently as to make it the obvious choice, so we are left with deciding between two arguably equal words. With two major exceptions. The first exception is article history and long-term consensus. Unless there is good reason to change, the word that has enjoyed the longest and earliest stability should be maintained. The second exception is if one of the two arguably equal words could be easily misconstrued by the casual reader. This is the only place where "myth" fails. That does not mean that we should shy away from using the word appropriately within the article itself, but it should help guide us away from making such an unnecessary change to the title of the article. No such argument can be made against the word "narrative". HokieRNB 15:07, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Well put. -- Avanu (talk) 16:59, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
I find it quite astonishing that some editors are arguing that possibly giving a negative connotation to widely-held unscientific misconceptions is somehow a bad thing. Its a GOOD thing. Pass a Method talk 17:52, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. "Myth" is the appropriate scholarly word (and therefore more compliant with NPOV). That this is the only flood myth with different wording, as if this particular myth is somehow different from all others, seems to be a gross violation of NPOV as well. We use the words "creation myth" in the first sentence but can't use it in the title? Absurd. Yobol (talk) 18:10, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes, let's throw some logic in here. Without some huge theological somersaulting and jumping through of hoops, only a maximum of one of the creation stories from history and the whole world can be true. That makes the rest (and most logically, all of them) false. That means they are ALL myths. Simple. Occam's Razor at work. Anything else is blatant religious POV pushing. HiLo48 (talk) 19:12, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
And only slightly less useless than the above comment. The point had already been made. Stop beating the horse corpse, HiLo. Please! John Carter (talk) 18:29, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
So wait, you are suggesting the correct logic is this: the story as told in Genesis is false; therefore, it must be titled "myth"? That negates nearly every argument put forth for including the word "myth" in the title! I thought the whole point was that WP should make no judgment as to whether the story is true or false, and the title must reflect that NPOV. And despite your faulty logic, you still haven't addressed how the word "narrative" fails your test. By the way, I don't even agree with the statement you made. There can be two vastly different stories that are both true, so long as they don't contradict each other in a way that makes one necessarily false. If one account says it happened on a Tuesday and another account says it happened because of a butterfly flapping its wings, and a third account says it happened in the rain, they can all be true. Furthermore, to say that they are ALL myths doesn't contradict the fact that this ONE is a narrative. HokieRNB 19:38, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Yep, as I said, some huge theological somersaulting and jumping through of hoops. That's where the religious folk lose me. Extreme stretching of logic to attempt to try to rationally justify something that's really only a matter of faith. This is Wikipedia, not Christianopedia. Drop the POV line now. Look globally, beyond your own faith, please. HiLo48 (talk) 20:53, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
What are you talking about? Exactly where is the matter of faith in this issue? This is a question of logic. If you want to say without qualification that "the account in Genesis is false," how does that impact the fitness of this article being titled "Genesis creation narrative"? Is the text narrative, or some other form of text? (It sure ain't poetry.) Is the article in question talking about Genesis, or some other ancient narrative? Is the focus of the article creation or some other subject? Show me how putting those three words together introduce any sort of faith-based bias? HokieRNB 21:06, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose - there is no compelling reason to change the title of this article yet again. The words used are common in both scholarly literature and in everyday use. (Perhaps not the most common - plain old "Creation in Genesis" or "Genesis creation story" would probably be much more common.) The words are sufficiently clear to help readers find the correct article, they adequately disambiguate the subject, and they are neutral. The only reason to change is to push a POV. Ἀλήθεια 21:06, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

History of article titles, moves, and discussions

(a brief guide for the ignorant or apathetic) From its very early days in 2004, the article wandered between Creation account in Genesis, Creation accounts in Genesis, Creation account(s) in Genesis, until settling on Creation according to Genesis with this edit on 07 November 2004. There is stayed for more than 5 years until a short-lived discussion which included only 7 editors (3 opposed, 3 support, 1 did not offer an opinion on the title) at the end of January 2010, resulting in a move to Genesis creation myth (as opposed to the originally suggested "Biblical creation myth"). (See discussion here). Less than two weeks later, this move was undone, then summarily reverted, and then discussed a week later by a lot more editors, resulting in no consensus to move (back). (See discussion here.) The alternate title lasted only another two months before another series of lengthy discussions in April 2010 (here and here) resulted in a move to the current title of Genesis creation narrative. With this title the article lived for almost 2 years, until March 2012, when another pair of discussions here and here failed to gain any consensus to change, either back to the short-lived Genesis creation myth, nor to the alternate proposal of Creation story in Genesis. In closing that last discussion, the admin entreated editors to "hold off on further move proposals for at least six months..." So here we are, approximately 5 months and 3 weeks later, back to the exact same discussion. All this to say, please don't jump into the above discussion lightly. HokieRNB 18:31, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Summary of rationales

  • Consistency - this round of discussions was put forth predicated on the notion that "articles about creation and flood myths from all other cultures have titles identifying them as creation and flood myths". Of the 35 distinct entries in the list of creation myths, only 13 have myth in the "title", and even among those one is piped and thus the word "myth" doesn't appear in the title of the article (or section, for those that don't warrant an entire article).
  • Neutrality - for some reason, editors argue that the word "myth" is more neutral than the word "account", "narrative", or "story". Personally, I would rank them as "narrative" dead center, with "account" on the "favoring truthfulness" side, "story" only ever-so-slightly on the the "favoring falseness" side, and "myth" even further from neutral on that side.
  • Commonality - lots of editors have dug up lots of statistics, but it does not appear that use of the word "myth" as a title for the Genesis passage is any more common than "account", "narrative", or "story". In fact, it appears exactly the opposite is true.
  • Am I missing one of the major arguments against the current title? HokieRNB 20:29, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
If I had wanted my thoughts written in fewer words, I would have done so myself. HiLo48 (talk) 00:19, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to HokieRNB for providing the useful history and summary, which should help move discussion forward. However, I have some suggestions for improvement. If my memory of the debates is correct, the Consistency rationale for "creation myth" is not merely titular. Some cosmogonies (Pangu) are uniquely named and "creation myth" would be redundant in the title, others are regional or multiple (Chinese creation myth) and need it, still others need "creation myth" to clarify ambiguity (Genesis contains other myths like Genesis flood narrative and Garden of Eden). Creation myth is the most consistent and widely applicable collocation, both creation narrative and creation story redirect to it. Your native-speaker intuition concerning Neutrality is at odds with SentiWordNet noted above. It lists the nouns myth, narrative, story, and account as all equally "P: 0 O: 1 N: 0" – scores of zero positive, one objective/neutral, and zero negative. Also, you seem to have overlooked Religiocentric bias, as discussed here. Keahapana (talk) 00:46, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
The accusation of "religiocentric bias" seems to be part of the "consistency" argument (i.e. an alleged bias is making people inconsistent) -- which falls over when you look at (1) the scholarly literature, and (2) other Wikipedia articles. -- 202.124.72.165 (talk) 02:19, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Keahapana, it isn't just "native-speaker intuition". While SentiWordNet seems to think the word "myth" is completely neutral, it doesn't have the same opinion of "mythic", "mythological", or "mythical", which all rub shoulders very closely with the root word "myth". In addition, the other resource you mention, The Corpus of Contemporary American English, clearly shows a bias for the word "myth". It is beyond obvious via The Corpus that "myth" is a common synonym of "false". All the fluttering on this page about "myth" being so scholarly and rigidly defined can't stand apart from its common meaning. If such things were true, we would just combine the articles for Scientific theory and Theory and no one would argue about those things ever again. It is silly to say "myth" only has the one meaning that scholars say, after all, most words don't get created by a researcher in a lab, but by regular people in regular usage. Incidentally, looking at our sister project, Wiktionary, it says "mythos" μῦθος comes from Proto-Indo-European *mēwdʰ- (“to complain or care about something”). It certainly is interesting considering so many here seem to be complaining and/or caring about this. :) -- Avanu (talk) 03:44, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure this is a key issue, but since it's been raised, SentiWordNet doesn't attach scores to words, but to senses of words (so one sense of "story" is P: 0 O: 0.625 N: 0.375, for example). Due to a problem with WordNet itself, several dictionary senses of "myth" are missing from the SentiWordNet database, so I'm not sure SentiWordNet tells us anything useful. -- 202.124.74.167 (talk) 09:47, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
So Christian theologians such as Brother [{George Every]] are wrong when they say that the existence of "myths in the Bible would now be admitted by nearly everyone", including "probably all Roman Catholics and a majority of Protestants"? Every cites the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 and the story of Eve's temptation as exampled of biblical myths. If you look you will find other theologians using the terminology as well. Dougweller (talk) 09:24, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
This debate is not about whether the Genesis creation narrative should be described as a myth (that's controversial too, but it's a content issue). This debate is about whether "Genesis creation myth" would be a better article title. And there, the statistics are clear: "Genesis creation myth" is not a widely used term, and nothing in Every's pre-conversion book changes that. -- 202.124.74.167 (talk) 09:47, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Signatures of those who do not wish to have the rationales misrepresented by HokieRNB

Signatures of those who do not wish to have the rationales misrepresented by HokieRNB

Please. Your rationale was "Support, of course. This nonsense has to end." Should we keep your response next to the guy above who simply said "Duh"? Some editors are writing interesting rationales and pulling in sources. And some editors are just making noise. I hardly see how the current wording of "Genesis creation narrative" falls into the depths of 'nonsense'. -- Avanu (talk) 04:39, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
"...just making noise"? Hmmm. I'd be a bit careful with lines like that. My thoughts are above - "If I had wanted my thoughts written in fewer words, I would have done so myself." HiLo48 (talk) 08:22, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
You're right, of course, HiLo48. It is just disappointing to see a whole new section created simply because Hokie didn't quite sum up "nonsense" when he was trying to sum up the discussion. Comments that don't add anything to the debate would probably get left off. Honestly, I can see both sides of this here, even though I've consistently been in favor of just leaving things at the status quo. "Narrative" is a bit of an awkward word here. It isn't perfect, but it seems to be a decent compromise position. It should be obvious that people have strong feelings about this in both directions on this issue. Which to me shows that despite all the protestation about it simply being about the "scholarly word" or the "polite choice", it is also an extension of the whole debate of the inclusion or exclusion of God or the 'concept of god' in our daily life.
But on this section itself again, Seb simply claimed we need to end this nonsense. The current article title hardly screams jabberwock. It is concise and clear and based on word choices, says "The telling of creation from the book of Genesis". Its quite sensical. I suppose the nonsense is in ourselves for spending so much time on this considering that the status quo is very likely to win at this point. Have a great day. -- Avanu (talk) 12:45, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Requested move (arbitrary break 2)

  • Oppose There is nothing wrong with the present title. It is clear, scholarly and neutral. The amount of talk page space that has been consumed, and editors' time waisted, over the term "myth" is deplorable.--agr (talk) 21:31, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose The point is that in the non academic scene "myth" has a different meaning and so is not appropriate to use. It looks as if it is pushing a POV. A large fraction of our readers will have some familiarity with our article topic, so their will be far more points of view already out there. The current title is safe and neutral. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:00, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support both. In my opinion, specifically using "creation narrative" for One true faith and generally "creation myth" for others is religious bigotry, which WP should not tolerate. Some apologetic arguments that the Bible has uniquely true "narratives" while other ("pagan") religions have false "myths" involve ludicrous distortions of history, logic, and language.

Others have suggested that the Genesis narratives are "myths". But "myth" is a slippery term, witness the fact that scholars use at least nine different definitions of "myth". According to McCartney and Clayton, "the common meaning of the term myth in popular parlance is 'a fabulous and untrue story'." This denotation, they say, makes the term "myth" totally inadequate for Genesis, for "biblical history is not myth, but a true story, told with theological purpose and vantage-point. It may use the images and linguistic forms of its environment, but slipping in the term myth by redefinition really results in a reduction of the uniqueness of biblical history". Moreover, the Genesis narratives demythologize pagan mythologies. Surely the label of "myth" is inappropriate for narratives that demythologize pagan mythologies. (Sidney Greidanus, Preaching Christ from Genesis, 2007, p. 23)

Wikipedia readers deserve fact-based objective information rather than faith-based Conservapediaish doublespeak. Keahapana (talk) 22:00, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks, but I quoted Greidanus to ridicule the absurdity of irrationally denying that Genesis is – by definition – a "creation myth."

The myth of creation is the symbolic narrative of the beginning of the world as understood by a particular community. The later doctrines of creation are interpretations of this myth in light of the subsequent history and needs of the community. Thus, for example, all theology and speculation concerning creation in the Christian community are based on the myth of creation in the biblical book of Genesis and of the new creation in Jesus Christ. (Encyclopædia Britannica, s.v., creation myth).

I'm sorry the Greidanus joke wasn't clearer. Keahapana (talk) 23:52, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose - for the following reasons: According to WP:NAME, resolving this debates depends on whether the article title is a name derived from reliable sources or a descriptive title created by Wikipedia editors. Given that there is no single common name for the subject of this article (evidenced through usage in a significant majority [emphasis mine] of English-language reliable sources), this article then receives a descriptive title. How shall we describe the subject? Incontrovertible fact #1, the text of Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 is "narrative" in form. There are arguments to be made about whether it is intended to be primarily historic, primarily symbolic, primarily scientific (well, actually almost no one argues that), primarily theological, etc. There are arguments about whether the author is one person, or edited from multiple accounts, or based on oral traditions, or indeed handed down from the Almighty himself. But all these arguments aside, everyone agrees that the text as it is presented is a narrative. Incontrovertible fact #2, the text of Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 has "creation" in focus. How the world was created, when it was created, why it was created, who created it, all these questions can be asked of the text, but clearly if you study the text, you study "creation". Incontrovertible fact #3, the scope of this article is "Genesis". Despite the fact that there are plenty of other biblical and non-biblical passages that should be considered when discussing creation as understood by Judaism, Christianity, or even Islam (all of whom hold Genesis as canonical to some extent), this article always has and continues to focus almost exclusively on "Genesis". Thus the title is derived: Genesis creation narrative. Maher-shalal-hashbaz (talk) 00:26, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment - I've never commented on this long-running show before. Looking at Category:Creation myths I see various titles which don't show NPOV in dealing with long-dead civilisations. There's no need for Sumerian creation myth to be labelled "myth" is there? What we have is an account or narrative. Propose (or probably second, it must have been proposed before) move to Sumerian creation narrative, Chinese creation narrative etc. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:52, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
[1] pp. 202-203 in Davila, J. R. (1995). The flood hero as king and priest. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 54(3), 199-214.
[2] Ewa Wasilewska (2000). Creation stories of the Middle East. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. pp. 146–. ISBN 978-1-85302-681-2. Retrieved 23 May 2011.
[3] Bodde, Derk. 1961. "Myths of Ancient China", in Mythologies of the Ancient World, ed. by Samuel Noah Kramer, pp. 367–408. Anchor.
[4] Narration and Discourse in the Book of Genesis, Cambridge University Press, 1991, ISBN 9780521390200, p.1-319
Thanks,   — Jasonasosa 04:02, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes it's a fragmented narrative. But "myth" is still a loaded term in common use, which doesn't add anything to Sumerian creation narrative, Chinese creation narrative. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:26, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. Calling it simply a 'narrative' breaks convention, thus it violates WP:NPOV. Also, 'myth' is not only suitable, it specifies the specific sort of narrative the article focuses on.
    Why are we arguing over the definition of 'myth' when we already have a working definition for it? Wikipdia (us) defines 'myth' as:

    The term "mythology" can refer either to the study of myths (e.g., comparative mythology), or to a body or collection of myths (a mythos, e.g., Inca mythology). In folkloristics, a myth is a sacred narrative usually explaining how the world or humankind came to be in its present form, although, in a very broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story. Bruce Lincoln defines myth as "ideology in narrative form." Myths typically involve supernatural characters and are endorsed by rulers or priests. They may arise as overelaborated accounts of historical events, as allegory for or personification of natural phenomena, or as an explanation of ritual. They are transmitted to convey religious or idealized experience, to establish behavioral models, and to teach.


    —Sowlos (talk) 15:26, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Keep current title – For all the other reasons to keep, and quite simply, Genesis creation narrative is not a mythology article, but a sub-article of the Creationism article, that was previously a section in that article that needed to grow beyond the space limitations of the main article. This article is supposed to be dealing with the theological aspects of the creation narrative in the 1st two chapters of Genesis, as it relates to Creationism. The word narrative is very neutral – it is a separate issue as to whether the narrative is truth or myth. The existing consensus of the status quo still stands unmoved. There were no new or better reason(s) to change. Some of the old reasoning(s) from the previous move discussion were not even included, (probably because a lot of ideas on both sides of the issue went over like lead balloons. :)  There are significant new reasons to keep. Let's wrap this discussion and put it behind us, and address the contuing problems in the article. Thanks for your attention to these things. —Telpardec  TALK  15:39, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Please do not collapse a discussion because you disagree with its premise. Thank you.
You may vote in the arbitrary break above the Alternative move proposal.
—Sowlos (talk) 15:49, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
MOVED
—Sowlos (talk) 15:52, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Creationism? Discussions on this Talk page have been verbose, but I must have missed the consensus that "This article is supposed to be dealing with the theological aspects of the creation narrative in the 1st two chapters of Genesis, as it relates to Creationism." Would you please provide the archive link? Thanks, Keahapana (talk) 22:11, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose as one of the individuals who has and is most strongly in favor of the word "myth" and related words being used here. The story as it is relayed in the Book of Genesis is unfortunately not a single myth, and the academic world has rather clearly indicated that it is, in fact, more than one myth mashed together. This includes the different versions of Adam and Eve presented, as well as some of the later stories, which almost certainly started as separate myths. Genesis creation myths might not be an unsuitable title, but that isn't the one proposed. John Carter (talk) 18:29, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose / Keep current title. How often are we going to have this poll? I am opposed to calling any living major world religion a "mythology", that goes for Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism at a minimum. I explain this position further with numerous major theological sources on my user page. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 18:09, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
A myth is the story; a religion is the system of belief and practice which that myth may be a part of.
—Sowlos (talk) 18:27, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
If you look over the sources, you will see at least 12 competing definitions of "myth" enumerated, which is highly ambiguous and best avoided. Also different authors will disagree about which specific parts of which scriptures are in the genre of 'myth', because the whole thing is a subjective viewpoint. There are those who would call the entire Bible 'myth' while there are others who dispute that any of it is myth. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 18:39, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
@Till: You might be interested in seeing that, apparently, Wikipedia:WikiProject Hindu mythology seems to disagree with you. John Carter (talk) 18:33, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes. Wikipedia already has a naming convention using the word 'myth'. There may be some ambiguity around the meaning of the word 'myth' in general, but Wikipedia has already settled on a more traditional understanding of the word.
—Sowlos (talk) 18:49, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Well I don't think it's legitimately done for wp to 'settle' on a policy that is so widely opposed and controversial... and in this case it isn't even the most commonly used term, as editors have pointed out repeatedly. And in fact, the definition that includes scriptures of contemporary major world religions is not the 'traditional understanding', quite the contrary, it arises out of Karl Marx etc. and is thus polemic, not neutral. Read the sources to get an understanding of how the senses of the word developed and multiplied over time. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 19:02, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
With 'settle', I meant de facto, not de jure. I don't think this discussion made it down any official channels. My point was simply based in WP policy to follow existing conventions for consistency's sake.
And in fact, the definition that includes scriptures of contemporary major world religions is not the 'traditional understanding', quite the contrary, it arises out of Karl Marx etc. Wrong. It's from Greek 'mythos', meaning story, idea, speech, etc. It came to mean 'false story' in English because the old Greek 'myths' (stories) were after all 'false'. But, this is a little irrelevant. Not enough English speakers understand this.
—Sowlos (talk) 19:46, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
In fact, the term had already come to mean primarily "false story" in Greek by 100 AD, long before English was conceived of. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 19:57, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Its association with 'falsity' was similar to the modern English word 'story'. ... This is pointless, can't we agree that we both would accept one of the alternate proposals? After all, that's what this discussion is supposed to be about.
—Sowlos (talk) 11:39, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose and Keep current title. The simple word "narrative" abides by all the WP rules, no need to turn it into a bogeyman. Those who think calling it a "narrative" is POV are pushing their own POV. It's the Bible, it's been around for millennia, it's the core faith of billions of people, now comes WP and wishes to foist atheistic academic POVs on the world. First "narrative" will be changed to "myth" then myth will be changed to "fable" then fable will be changed to "fairy tale" then fairy tale will be changed to "lie" then lie will be changed to "hate" then hate will be changed to "denial" then denial will be changed to "invisible" -- how do I know, because The Holocaust which took place in the 1940s is now commonly disparaged and trashed via Holocaust denial. What a weird and useless debate this all is. IZAK (talk) 06:34, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Requested move (arbitrary break 3)

  • Support: I ran my own numbers:
Search term Google Books Google Scholar
genesis "creation myth" 138,000 5,070
genesis "creation narrative" 19,100 2,630
bible genesis "creation myth" 8,070 3,050
bible genesis "creation narrative" 5,600 2,240
Purely by the numbers, “creation myth” is much more common. In addition, the main objection seems to be that a non-academic and colloquial meaning of “myth” somehow implies negative things; my reading of WP:RNPOV is that we should not cater to this. —Kerfuffler  howl
prowl  07:35, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
"Creation story" gets even more hits. I get 8,700 post-1990 English-language GBook hits for Genesis "creation story" -llc, 5,480 for Genesis "creation myth" -llc. "Story", "narrative," and "account" all mean the same thing, but the word "myth" has a different set of associations. Kauffner (talk) 08:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
No, if you go by connotation, “story” has an implication of falsehood, and “account” has an implication of truth. You can't ignore that if you're going to consider the non-scholarly connotation of “myth”. I think “narrative” escapes because it's too multisyllabic for common usage. —Kerfuffler  howl
prowl  08:58, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment. Those numbers are not to the point, since they do not consider the entire phrase, which is what you should do for potential article titles. I get:
Search term Google Books Google Scholar
"genesis creation myth" 2,760 128
"genesis creation narrative" 3,840 224
-- 202.124.75.42 (talk) 06:13, 23 September 2012‎ (UTC)
Giving such numbers are also misleading. People often search for terms in the form the expect to find them.
—Sowlos (talk) 15:10, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
The “entire phrase” thing is hogwash. This is a descriptive phrase, not a proper noun. —Kerfuffler  scratch
sniff  15:17, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
If it's a descriptive phrase, you should search for it as a phrase. If you split off the word "genesis," you get thousands of irrelevant hits. For example in the book Chicano Studies: The Genesis of a Discipline, the author writes "Carlos ... has asserted a variation of the creation myth." In the book In the Beginning: The Navajo Genesis the author talks about Navajo creation myths. In fact, the overwhelming majority of hits containing the word "genesis" and the phrase "creation myth" have nothing to do with the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. Only uses of the entire phrase "genesis creation myth" or "genesis creation narrative" are relevant. Furthermore, if you're arguing the entire phrase should be used as a title, you need to show that scholars use the entire phrase. -- 202.124.75.104 (talk) 10:22, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Alternative move proposal

What's wrong with:

This whole discussion smacks of making a point on both sides. So I propose that we disambiguate the topics by identifying the source (the Bible). If people on both sides feel they're "losing" or yielding the bone they're fighting over, then great: it means the choice would be neutral. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:15, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

One problem with “(Biblical)” would be “whose bible?” Creation (Hebrew Bible) and Flood (Hebrew Bible) are less ambiguous; but Creation (Book of Genesis) and Flood (Book of Genesis) would be more specific and leave particular bibles out of it. ~ Robin Lionheart (talk) 19:38, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Robin, I think that's a good question, but the article has to deal with the several traditions and differences among interpretations regardless of what it's called, so I would agree with Lisa following that "Biblical" just means Bible as it's broadly defined at the mian article. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:57, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for trying to find a Solomonic compromise, but these titles are semantically inaccurate. "Creation" isn't synonymous with "creation narrative"; "flood" doesn't mean "flood narrative". Keahapana (talk) 00:38, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose The current titles are much more descriptive and specific, and much closer to the way that Reliable Sources describe the subject. Since "Article titles are based on what reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject by" (WP:Article titles), we should follow policy. Though again, my choice would be "Genesis creation story", which is the descriptor preferred by the vast majority of scholarly sources, though "narrative" is also used (more than "myth"), as I've already shown above. First Light (talk) 01:32, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose. There are other creation stories in the Bible, in the Psalms and in Job at least. And Genesis has at least two creation stories according to the common mainstream higher-critic assessment, one by the Priestly source in Gen 1 and one by the Jahwist in Gen 2. However, the oppose is merely weak, because the reason for the move itself - if it wasn't factually incorrect and/or misleading and/or confusing, and if the current title wasn't perfectly good - is commendable. I'd support a move to "Genesis creation story" if people could get behind it and do away with this constant, clock-watching bullshit (there's that word again!). This RM was filed nine days before the "don't do it again for six months" deadline the closing admin asked for, because some of the support-move-to-myth group were insanely agitated when they didn't get the three-admin closure they wanted, and tried to take that closing admin to noticeboards for malfeasance and general wikilawyering. I'm surprised it wasn't opened again sooner, and, whether this is moved or not, it will eventually go to arbitration unless the consensus changes dramatically or the title is locked by binding RfC/administrative fiat, no matter how many steps there are between here and there. Note that two of the above supporters, two of the most vocal, for "move", have expressed that they desire the move because, if not only or specifically because, it will give, to quote, "negative connotation to unscientific mumbo-jumbo believed by too many people". St John Chrysostom Δόξατω Θεώ 23:26, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose because (A), it just smells WP:POINTy, and (B), this article is about the Genesis creation narrative, i.e. its laser-beam focus is on the text in the first two chapters of Genesis, containing the creation story/narrative. It is not an article about all the Bible says about creation. Ἀλήθεια 01:18, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Er, I'm a little offended by being accused of smelling bad. After all, I've neither edited this article nor to my knowledge participated on this talk page before. I do take your point, however (or more accurately, the point made by John Chrysostom), so wouldn't Creation in Genesis (currently a redirect) be a way to accomplish the same thing? Which is, contrary to your immediate presumption of bad faith, to achieve neutrality, or at least a truce among POV warriors, by simply identifying this account of Creation by its source, rather than characterizing it in any particular way. I don't think readers are likely to look up either "Genesis creation myth" or "Genesis creation narrative." I think they're most likely to type the word "Creation" first, at which point they'd get a drop-down that will give various alternatives. If they're looking for Genesis as a book of the Bible, they'll type in Genesis first. That's one reason I think it's most helpful to have a title starting with "Creation," such as Creation (Biblical) or Creation in Genesis—because I think "Creation" is the most likely first search term. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:42, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I think they're most likely to type the word "Creation" first, at which point they'd get a drop-down that will give various alternatives. If they're looking for Genesis as a book of the Bible, they'll type in Genesis first. That's why I think 'Creation (Book of Genesis)' would be the best compromise if 'Myth' isn't used.
—Sowlos (talk) 17:51, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose - Not that I necessarily dislike the idea. As John Chrsysostom points out, there are other creation myths in the Bible, and titling just one of them like this would be problematic. Biblical Flood, considering that the word "Biblical" is, in English, almost universally used to refer to the Judeo-Christian Bible, and that is about the only "flood" in the Bible, would seem to me to be a good alternative title and have no WP:NAME problems. Personally, I am not myself sufficiently familiar with any academic works speculating or theorizing about the original versions of the stories of Adam and Eve, so I don't know if there is any basis for other articles on those possibly hypothetical precursors, I might opt for Creation according to Genesis as the most neutral possible title, but that's just one idea. John Carter (talk) 18:29, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Observation: It appears that some of those who "oppose" to this offshoot proposal, agree for a title change just not exactly how User:Cynwolfe proposed, by using similar terminology but in a different order. I must agree that the title starting with the word "Creation..." is a good idea per Sowlos. Thanks,   — Jasonasosa 18:52, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: In this thread I see proposed: Creation (Bible), Creation (Hebrew Bible), Creation (Book of Genesis), Creation (Biblical), Creation in Genesis, and Creation according to Genesis. So it's hard to tell what proposal we are discussing but I have no real problem with any of those suggestions and would support them all. They are all just as good as the current title as far as I'm concerned. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 19:37, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose the change for change's sake. Current title is accurate. Opposed to a title that broadens the meaning to an article about biblical creation, but not opposed in theory to going back to the original title Creation according to Genesis or Creation in Genesis, but only if it includes broad consensus to change it and keep it there. Strongly opposed to wasting any more time discussing title changes. HokieRNB 19:50, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Weak Support for Richard Lionheart's proposal of "Creation (Book of Genesis)", much like I weakly support "Genesis creation story" or "account", but only in the instance no other consensus can be reached - I reiterated that I believe the current article title is perfectly acceptable. According to a strict interpretation of UCN, "Genesis creation story" is where it should be at. Lionheart's proposal is something new, at least. There's also something possible such as Genesis 1-2, for a name, even though it's quite unintuitive, redirects can be placed from all of the intuitive names to it. Further strong support of HokieRNB's comment immediately preceding. St John Chrysostom Δόξατω Θεώ 05:45, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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