Talk:Shinji Takahashi (religious leader)

Neutral point of view

Large portions of this article are written from the viewpoint of a fawning admirer of this person as opposed to an objective observer. Beeblebrox (talk) 08:00, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree, Beeblebrox. It looks like a very long article (that only references his own works, at the bottom of the page) that does nothing but attempt to promote this guy's self-founded religious group. I think it would take more effort than would be reasonable to fix this article as it is, so I marked it {db-promo}. Yewlongbow (talk) 10:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

• I added a book reference which is somewhat critical of him. -- Eastmain (talk) 12:40, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

copyedit notes

I am attempting to copyedit this large article, after skimming through it, I think it might be substantially shorter when I am finished, but I will go section by section, to make any revisions other editors deem necessary, easier to complete. If you feel that I have made edits that are not an improvement to this article, please feel free to revert me, I won't be offended, honest! Also, I suspect this article will take a day or two to wade through. --^Despay_re (^tal_k) 05:56, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Lead:

- removed Japan wikilink as per wp:overlink

- removed reference to "Humanity's Scientific Research Center" as it is repeated once in the text, but never clarified or expanded on, it has no frame of reference for what it is, and its name is not as self-descriptive as it seems

Bio, Secular career:

- removed links as per overlink policy

- minor prose edits

- removed Army war college link, since it points to an American college, just before WWII started? I don't think so...

- removed unexplained "as well as the center president of the Humanity’s Scientific Research Center." sentence fragment

Religious life:

- tag starting to get some use

- overlinks removed

- fixed book refence for notes

- removed languages spoken "fact", no indication that he ever studied languages is presented in the article, and those particular languages would require years of concentrated study

- removed text repeated in note 5

- removed "(he had planned to live only up until the age of 48 in this life), " since it is contradicted by note 6

- tagged

- minor text changes for clarification, removed speculation

God Light Association:

Prose fixes, trimming much extra wordiness

Practical activities:

- Improved grammatical construction

- removed repetitive text, added note about 6 powers

- more text trimming

- I deliberately left in an external link at the end of the first paragraph here with the following rationale, the guideline says it shouldn't "normally" be linked, but the powers are not referred to again in this article, they don't seem to have much to do with this article overall, but they are "powers" ascribed to the subject of the article, and the website linked to does not seem overly promoting (I understand I have no control over how that could change in the future) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Despayre (talk • contribs) 04:53, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Principles:

- Book cite fixed

- book cite fixed

- trimmed excess verbiage

Past, present, and afterlife:

- Excess verbiage removed, a lot of extraneous detail

- Minor prose changes too

Plan of the world above:

- Large tracts of text removed, far too detailed for general knowledge, and very hard to follow without previous understanding of Takahashi's teachings (even with understanding, the length of the prose made the meaning very hard to follow, too many multiple explanations/terms for the same point)

Hasshoudou (The Noble Eightfold Path):

- Added link to WP article on the 8 fold path, removed all unnecessary detail that is covered there

- removed additional detail, confusing, unnecessary, rambling text

- removed links as per overlink policy

- grammatical fixes

- removed many "he/she" references, replaced with "they" or "one" constructs

- run-on sentences repaired, restructured

- broken down into more easily read paragraphs, longer concepts are more easily "digested" when not crammed up against the next concept

- removed non-sensical example "., for example, ...; one does not eat poisons of the heart when one makes judgments according to the measuring rule of the heart if the hasshoudou"

- changed "smoggy" to "cloudy" for article consistency

- tag, reluctantly added

- Fixed book cite

- several more text repairs for clarity

- I think I'm halfway through!

Towards the Present Age:

- Trimmed excess verbiage (mostly redundancies)

- repaired run-on sentence, (first one of the paragraph)

- Large convoluted chunk of text removed, all covered in detail already in the article, some of it, pure speculation, and of course, still no references

- "etc.," is never necessary after giving examples

- removed "As a result, it was deemed that there were some parts, both formally and internally, that were not pure as compared to the times when Gotama Siddhartha, Jesus Christ, etc., existed." since the previous sentence says they were pure, then stuff happened, we don't need to add again, that they weren't pure after impurities were added

- minor grammar fixes

- more text, completely repetitous, only phrased differently, removed

- more text removed, we got it, practicing "hou" is the laws of nature, that leads to harmony, away from it, leads to disharmony. Again, repetitive.

From Ancient Times to the Christian Era:

- UFO's now? cool...

- more run-on sentences fixed

- removed reference to El Lantie as an archangel, there is no reference in any religion that I could find that refers to anything similar to that name

- removed timeframe of Satan's rule in Hell, I'm going to need a reference for that

- created paragraphs from the "stream of consciousness" text

- corrected "Lamudia" to "Lemuria"

- added relevant wikilinks

- removed "600,000" number, and biblical reference note, Exodus 12:38-42 does NOT quote any numbers, I checked 6 diffent biblical versions

- fixed book cite

- removed "on thin ice" characterization, Don't think Jesus said that

- "ultimately resulting in salvation" who's? Siddhartha's? the demon's? the demon followers'? Unclear.

- 3 weird references, separated and formatted, into 6 proper references (although the cassette tapes may need better cite formatting still!

Soul (consciousness):

- fixed section headings (caps) as per MOS

- Major prose fixes for readability, very dense run-on sentences with extraneous detail, re-worded.

- Added tag, where did the parents come into this? We've never head about this in the article til now

- removed "see below" reference for reidou, left the quickie definition, presumably, if the reader made it this far, he'll get to "below", also a self-referencing link, without a link, seems a little goofy imo (possibly you could link to the relevant section below, but there may be a policy against that... anyone?)

- Grammar trimming/pruning for clarity

- Zone of Ideas, very concept-dense... trimmed as best I could, but I think he's got some complicated thoughts here, that's as clear as I could make it without pruning out some of Shinji's content/concept

- regarding the body of light, that's quite a concept... but at least it's written reasonably well :)

- body of light book cite fixed

- refactored the "definitions" of the soul section

- Not happy that this section "looks pretty" but it's a good start, and is better than the morass of run-ons here to begin with, a more familiar editor could probably do more in this area

The principle body of the soul and 5 alter egos:

- Fixed numbering wiki-code, and adjusted the 3 series to the listed *4* series

- explanation of "Mentality" removed, explained in detail above

- explanation of "energy of God" removed, explained in detail above

- Large repetitive paragraph removed, an expert may want to re-examine, but as far as I can see, this is a re-hash of previously said statements (about the eightfold path) and self-evident truths/definitions such as "“Reason” is a control mechanism and serves as brakes against, or is what stops overdrives of, “instinct” and “emotions”", also had unsourced rather bizarre statements like "(psychics observe an irregular manas, with indentations in various places of the manas. This is not a theory or idea, but a fact)"

- at the very least, that section would need to be dramatically re-written with sources!

Other notes:

- This article could use some kind of conclusion too, it just... stops.

- Also, I see somewhere else that we have an article here that lists the number of adherents of Takahashi, it puts his "flock" at a peak of 20,000 at one point, and cites a book for the reference, it seems that would be a solid piece of information that should be in this article as well

- one of the his books has a bad ISBN reference, I don't doubt he wrote it, but I couldn't find it to correct it

- a picture wouldn't hurt this article either, it's still a fair whack of text to read... and I think it's about half the original length!

I hope I've improved this article a little, although at first glance, I'll agree it looks like I beat it up a little bit, like a perennial flower, sometimes you have to prune right back to the trunk and let the branches grow out again (nice analogy huh? :) ) If you feel I haven't improved the article, please feel free to revert anything you are opposed to (although I did spend over 15 hours on this, so please don't just dismiss all my edits because you see one you don't like either!), this was just a good-faith best effort on my part, I don't claim to be anywhere near an expert on this topic, I just tried to make it readable, comprehensible, wiki-compliant, and not too confusing for the average reader while keeping all the most salient points. --^Despay_re (^tal_k) 07:24, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

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