Talk:Hitchens's razor

"Avowed atheist"

The adjective "avowed" was added to "atheist" in [the lead] in this edit. This falls afoul of a cliché, and WP:WTW, and has numerous other issues. We don't call any other biographical subject an "avowed" anything, unless this term is used to illustrate that they admitted to something taboo or criminal during their time. In secular countries in the modern era, one can be an atheist within the law. Claiming that Hitchens was an "avowed" atheist implies that he shouldn't have been open about it. We don't call people avowed engineers, avowed attorneys, avowed Christians, or avowed pantheists unless they express these open beliefs in a milieu where it is illegal or dangerous for them to do so. There is therefore no reason to refer to Hitchens as an "avowed atheist" except to denigrate the subject. More to the point, adjectives like this are rarely used in encyclopedic writing. Viriditas (talk) 20:09, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

No, we don't use "militant" atheist, either.[1] This is getting ridiculous. There is nowhere in Wikipedia where the term "militant atheist" is used to describe a biographical subject. This is, again, a term of denigration, used by his critics. It inherently violates NPOV. Please remove it. There is nothing "militant" about anything Hitchens said or did in regards to atheism. This is a right-wing taking point used by his detractors. Viriditas (talk) 20:14, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

This is patently false. Your first diff is incorrectly labeled as being the addition of "avowed". It is clearly not. When the premise of your argument is a lie, the rest is irrelevant. See also wikt:avow. —Locke Cole • t • c 20:16, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

You appear to be very confused. The diff is accurate. Viriditas (talk) 20:19, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@Viriditas: Trust me. I'm not the one confused here. —Locke Cole • t • c 20:21, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

You seem very confused. You don't need to ping me, for example. I'm right here. The terms "avowed" and "militant" are entirely unnecessary and add nothing to the article. They are used to denigrate the subject. "Militant atheist" is a term that has a long, sordid history on Wikipedia, and has been used in the past by members of WikiProject Conservatism to attack atheists. There remains nothing "avowed" about Hitchens, nor anything "militant". We don't call people avowed plumbers or avowed actors, and there is simply no reason to refer to Hitchens as an avowed atheist. It is an attempt to insert bias. These are weasel words and have no place here. What reason do you support these terms? I see no rationale for their use in this discussion. We avoid unnecessary adjectives whenever possible. You seem to be doing things backwards. Viriditas (talk) 20:26, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@Viriditas: I'm not debating you until you understand that your premise is false. Go back and read your first diff until it sinks in how wrong you are. —Locke Cole • t • c 20:40, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

The diff shows that the term was added to the lead. Prior to that, it appeared in a separate section in the body. There's still no rationale to use the term. And, please don't keep pinging me. Viriditas (talk) 20:52, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

So the wording is not, in fact, "new" or "added". It was moved from the Analysis section that it has existed in for some time. Now back to the dictionary, per wikt:avow the relevant portion is To declare openly and boldly, as something believed to be right; …. I think it's quite clear that Christopher Hitchens was very open and bold about his atheism. It's also very relevant to the type of thinking that would produce Hitchen's razor, and so is germane to the discussion of it's origin. This is not a "weasel word" as you state, it simply acknowledges what our sources say about the man and helps distinguish him from an atheist that doesn't discuss their atheism as forcefully (if at all) as he did. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:07, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

When the wording was added has nothing to do with the crux of the matter. It was recently added to the lead, so what? Stop distracting from this discussion. The problem is your stated argument up above. The word "avowed" is an unnecessary adjective that acts as a weasel word in this context, as it implies by usage that atheism should not be open nor should it be "right". You yourself have said it implies that the default is "quiet" atheism. This is tantamount to saying Hitchens should have stayed in the closet. This is not how we write encyclopedia articles. Your claim that Hitchens was somehow more "forceful" about his atheism than other "quiet" atheists is hogwash. Words like "avowed" and "militant" are used derogatorily by his critics. There is no reason to use these words and they should be removed. This is pure POV pushing. It is not your job nor your role as an editor to insert personal commentary about how you feel Hitchens was "avowed" or "militant". Viriditas (talk) 22:38, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

When the wording was added has nothing to do with the crux of the matter. It actually has quite a lot to do with the issue, however inconvenient it is for you, the phrasing has existed in the article for nearly two years. It is the consensus language, which you must provide a good reason for changing and gain consensus for removing. The word "avowed" is an unnecessary adjective that acts as a weasel word in this context, as it implies by usage that atheism should not be open nor should it be "right". It implies no such thing. Quoting avow again since you seem to keep ignoring it: To declare openly and boldly, as something believed to be right; …. You yourself have said it implies that the default is "quiet" atheism. This is tantamount to saying Hitchens should have stayed in the closet. This is not how we write encyclopedia articles. Correct, we use consensus, not edit warring. Please refer yourself to WP:BRD. I've gone ahead and restored the consensus phrasing until and if such time arrives where a new consensus phrasing is agreed upon. The rest is basic ad hominen, and is ignored as such. Do better. —Locke Cole • t • c 23:35, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I've removed the term again. There is no reason to use the adjective "avowed", and such terms are not recommended since they mislead the reader. When in doubt, we omit needless words like adjectives, because editors who add them use them to push a POV. In this case, you are pushing the POV of his critics and detractors, who believe Hitchens was misled, mistaken, biased, or wrong because he was, according to them, "militant" or "avowed". It's also a cliché, which we avoid per WP:WTA. Please don't add it again. Viriditas (talk) 19:56, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I've removed the term again. Don't do that. Now you're edit warring. Please stop until you gain consensus to remove it. —Locke Cole • t • c 01:26, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@Viriditas: it's got to do with strongly held views. Being an engineer or attorney isn't a view. I think "avowed Christian", "avowed Muslim", "avowed Republican" all sound quite natural. To my ear, it mainly implies that these 'avowed' persons like to go about expressing these particular views a lot. But perhaps different varieties of English are at play here. We don't necessarily need "avowed", but we do need "atheist" in my view (probably should wikilink it too). As I said in my edit summary, "militant atheist" and "atheist speaker" are some good options for me, though there may be something better yet. I've been fighting with my thesaurus, but I didn't find anything more neutral sounding than "militant atheist" to express the strongly-held thing. He did go around speaking and debating about it, didn't he? Perhaps "atheist speaker" then? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:29, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It's really simple: adjectives are avoided unless there is a good, necessary reason to use them. There is no single good reason to use "avowed" or "militant" here, or anywhere else where we are discussing Hitchens. Your argument is that we need to note Hitchens had strongly held views. I don't see why this is an important distinction that needs to be made here. Doesn't virtually every biographical subject have strongly held views? You're trying to say that Hitchens's views on atheism were expressed more strongly than they should have been? No, I don't see that at all. He didn't interject his views where they weren't wanted. He wasn't an activist marching in a protest. He published books and participated in debates and lectures. I see no reason for any unnecessary adjectives here. Is Brad Pitt an avowed actor? Is Elon Musk a militant engineer? Viriditas (talk) 20:36, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Being an actor or an engineer has got nothing to do with holding views, that's a reductio ad absurdum. And yes, Hitchens had more strongly held views than most (it's the man who wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything). Anyone familiar with the man's work knows this; it's a blue skye really. If you never saw him speak, please do go to Youtube now and watch some: he's a true delight. One of the greatest speakers I've ever heard. There need not be anything controversial here. So, what about "atheist speaker"? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 21:23, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I am fully aware and familiar with Hitchens's oeuvre. The words "avowed" or "militant" have no place in this article. You keep coming back to how strongly held his views are, and I once again reiterate, we can make that argument about almost every significant and notable biographical entry. I just watched Elon Musk's three-hour personal tour of Starbase, where he and his team are working 24/7 to make humanity a multi-planetary species. If this doesn't make him a militant engineer, then I don't know what would. And yet, we don't use that type of wording on Wikipedia to describe our subjects. There's really nothing "blue sky" about this. It's poor practice to insert POV in the form of adjectives and it is discouraged. Hitchens was not just a "speaker", so I don't know why you are proposing such a thing. Viriditas (talk) 22:45, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Ha that's funny, I was thinking to myself earlier that Musk indeed is a militant engineer if there ever was one. But of course that would be tongue in cheek, because the word "militant" is semantically incompatible with the word "engineer". That's precisely why it's funny. Now of course we're not going to do tongue in cheek in wikivoice. My proposal was to have the text say that the razor is named after journalist, author, and atheist speaker Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011). The 'speaker' part actually fits quite well, since he was primarily a journalist, then an author, and towards the end of his life perhaps primarily a public speaker. "Atheist speaker" is a bit weird though, and I'm starting to regret phrasing it that way.

But while "militant atheist" was indeed quite the blunder on my part (I just honestly didn't realize that it's a term his enemies like to use against him; see, e.g., most of the entries here), "avowed atheist" really remains the better option, because like Locke Cole pointed out above, it indeed captures something about Hitchens' spirit that helps explain how and why he came up with the razor. But perhaps the most imporant thing is that dispassionate, reliable sources quite often describe him with these words (of course there're also some bad sources in there, but it becomes clearer if you scroll down and see how many sympathetic sources are in fact using it). I think there's very little to be said against that. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 23:26, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Eraclie Sterian (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and Hewlett Johnson (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) would like a word with you, apparently they're "avowed Christians". There's actually a lot more than that, too. For added fun, swap out "avowed Christian" for "devout Christian". —Locke Cole • t • c 23:44, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not a valid argument. The term should not be used unless there is a good reason to use it, such as being an avowed X in a context where it matters. Viriditas (talk) 19:43, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

And just to be clear, "avowed" was initially added 2019. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:11, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

And it was exceptionally clear in my original post, that the wording of "avowed" was just recently added to the lead, per my diff. You keep trying to clarify something that needs no clarification. The wording is problematic, not when it was added. Viriditas (talk) 22:29, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Then why even have the diff of its addition if you did not believe the timing was relevant? You're the one who opened up with that, not me. —Locke Cole • t • c 01:34, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Because citing a diff is standard procedure, and helps point the reader to the material under discussion. You are reading things into it that don't exist. Viriditas (talk) 19:45, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Locke Cole, It appears we have 4 v 2 on this. With plenty of cogent arguments made on both sides. But eventually a decision must be made. I would say this is a slim consensus in favor of removal...— Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 01:33, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment without comment -- there is "slim consensus in favour....". Moriori (talk) 04:39, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink: Yes, apparently the decision must be made in the span of a couple of hours. And what was initially 2 in support to 1 oppose has quickly switched to your preferred language. One might call it a miracle. Language which has persisted for nearly two years is spontaneously removed despite being sourced and verifiable and accurate (to anyone with a dictionary and an understanding that "avowed" is not a negative). I'm done here. I regret participating in this discussion. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:13, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

"Avowed atheist" is perhaps relevant to Hitchens, but not relevant to Hitchen's Razor

Something Locke Cole said deserves scrutinizing: It's also very relevant to the type of thinking that would produce Hitchen's razor, and so is germane to the discussion of it's origin. Is it? So an agnostic could not have come up with this? A member of a nontheistic religion could not have come up with this? A deist could not have come up with this? Avowed atheism does not necessarily lead to insights like Hitchen's Razor. You can be any of these and have, or not have, this epistemological insight. If anything, the important parts here are (1) that he was a good writer as in phrasing of the insight shows excellent parsimony of language (2) he was a good journalist, e.g. had a high levels of epistemic rigor, which was applied to all topics he engaged with (religion being one, but far from the only one he was interested in). Just being an atheist doesn't grant you parsimony of language or thought, and it similarly does not confer epistemic rigor. These are both things that have to be practiced and continuously kept in mind and that Htichen's was good at. So, for different reasons, I agree with Viriditas's conclusion. Atheism, avowed or otherwise, isn't relevant to Hitchen's Razor and I support going back to the lead primarily describing him as a writer. - Scarpy (talk) 06:41, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

You're still ignoring both 1) the sources @Apaugasma: provided above and 2) the dictionary definition of "avow". Like Viriditas, you also ignore that the phrase has longstanding consensus, the only recent change being that it was moved into the lead. I do find it amusing you cherry picked one thing I said but ignored the rest though. —Locke Cole • t • c 07:24, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Locke Cole, this is about whether it's proper to mention atheism in the first couple of sentences of the lead, not about whether to use "avowed" or not, nor whether we mention atheism at all. It's a separate argument here, which deserves a separate consideration and reply. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 07:40, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

It's quite clear that the lack of independent secondary sources is really playing up now. These would certainly be decisive to determine context, and the fact that we don't have them means that editors can easily allege or deny certain aspects without the proper form of proof. But in such a case, we have to draw upon common sense. For one, we are citing the fact that The dictum appears in Hitchens's 2007 book titled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. (p. 150/258 depending on edition) I think the title is already quite revealing here, but did you go and read the chapter in which it occurs? I'll post here a somewhat wider quote from p. 150 to show the context:

And remember, miracles are supposed to occur at the behest of a being who is omnipotent as well as omniscient and omnipresent. One might hope for more magnificent performances than ever seem to occur. The “evidence” for faith, then, seems to leave faith looking even weaker than it would if it stood, alone and unsupported, all by itself. What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. This is even more true when the “evidence” eventually offered is so shoddy and self-interested.

The evidence he's speaking of here is the 'evidence' of divine presence in such things as the fact that some of the debris at Ground Zero took the form of a cross (p. 149). The implication is that this is as good (or as bad) as asserting divine presence without evidence, which means that it can be dismissed without evidence too. There's just no escaping the fact that the razor was coined in the context of supporting an argument for atheism (or against theism, as one might have it).

Let's then look at the secondary sources we do have about the razor: The term 'Hitchens's razor' itself was coined by atheist blogger Rixaeton in December 2010, and popularised inter alia by evolutionary biologist and atheist activist Jerry Coyne after Hitchens died in December 2011. We're citing Michael Kinsley, who wrote about it in a newspaper article called "In God, distrust". Critics of the razor too, such as the philosophers Michael V. Antony and C. Stephen Evans we're citing, write about in the context of the epistemology of religion.

In light of all that, your claim that atheism, avowed or otherwise, isn't relevant to Hitchen's Razor just falls completely flat. Of course non-atheists could have come up with it, in theory. Of course Hitchens's rhetorical skills are relevant too. But as our whole article shows, his avowed atheism also played an important part in it, and atheism is in any case the context of its reception by others. Signaling this in the first sentence of the lead is helping the reader along to put that context in place, nothing more, nothing less. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 07:40, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

The bottom line is that the language we use to write encyclopedia articles needs to be neutral and without POV. The fact is, the language of "avowed atheist" and "militant atheist" is the language of Hitchens's critics, and it's mostly found in Christian literature to attack atheists. So the easiest thing to do when faced with this problem, is look at how our policies and guidelines work to prevent this situation. You could first start by asking which relevant reliable sources call Hitchens an "avowed atheist", and becoming aware of avoiding bias in sources. Second, we should be aware of words to watch: "Strive to eliminate expressions that are flattering, disparaging, vague, or clichéd, or that endorse a particular point of view (unless those expressions are part of a quote from a noteworthy source)." Given that "avowed atheist" is used as an example of how to use the word "avowed" in many places, it is obviously a cliché and should be avoided. But not just for that reason, but also for the reason you just explained above. You are inferring a great deal from the use of the term "avowed" here, and that's exactly how we don't use words on Wikipedia. I would say that you yourself have provided the best reason not to use "avowed" or "militant" or any other word. Viriditas (talk) 20:24, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Viriditas, I agree with this take. It's an unencyclopedic phrasing.— Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 01:30, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Atheism is relevant to Hitchens's razor, but the religious identity of Hitchens is not. Russell's teapot does it right, where it says "Russell specifically applied his analogy in the context of religion". It does not say "formulated by the avowed atheist Bertrand Russell". MarshallKe (talk) 20:15, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I should add that I do somewhat read the intent behind "avowed atheist" like one would read "self-admitted charlatan and scoundrel who shouldn't be trusted". We really don't need an adjective behind "atheist" in this article. MarshallKe (talk) 20:28, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Just to clarify, when I wrote in my edit summary that the sentence seems to call for an adjective, I meant that the sequence "journalist, author, and atheist Christopher Hitchens" would be a bit weird because it would misleadingly suggest that "atheist" (a doctrinal position) falls in the same category as "journalist" and "author" (which are professions), and that something like "avowed atheist" would clarify that his atheism was closely related to his professional activity. I was really thinking more in terms of copy-editing than in terms of NPOV . To me, neither "avowed atheist" nor even "militant atheist" reads at all like "self-admitted charlatan and scoundrel who shouldn't be trusted", but I can see why others would potentially read it that way. I also tend to agree with Viriditas above that it would be preferable to first become aware of how exactly reliable sources use the term "avowed atheist" (I've already pointed to its usage by sympathetic sources in Google Scholar, but that's not the same as actually reading these sources and getting familiar with them) before using it. I also agree with MarshallKe's proposal to, rather than qualify Hitchens as an atheist, point out the context of religious belief in which the razor was used. Show, don't tell. I would just add that the context was refuting religious belief, which is a bit more specific but in a helpful way. I've changed the article accordingly. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:25, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Independence from Occam's razor

In the AfD some claimed that Hitchens' razor (HRaz) is a special case of Occam's razor (ORaz). In fact, ORaz does not appear to entail HRaz. For an example, Reformed epistemology is a doctrine that is generally supportive of ORaz but rejects HRaz, showing that either ORaz doesn't entail HRaz or the reformed epistemologists are illogical, but in fact they are a well-known school in philosophy known for their logical ingenuity. It would be OR to put this in the article, but perhaps the argument will ward off future merge arguments. — Charles Stewart (talk) 20:58, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Justinian quote

"Proof lies on he who asserts, not on he who denies." Wouldn't this be translated into grammatical English as "Proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies"? "Him" is the object of "lies," then you switch case because "who" is the subject of "asserts" or "denies." Has someone 'corrected' it? Yes! Perhaps even Alan Watson, although his copy editor should have caught it. See the article Presumption of Innocence, History section. Monado (talk) 19:09, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Criticisms

Both criticisms of this axiom appear very weak to me, with the first apparently insisting that the burden of proof is on everyone else to prove a negative- which is logically impossible and leads to obvious absurdities if applied in practice i.e: "We need to believe in Atlantis, aliens, ghosts, cryptids, fortune telling, etc. even without evidence because no one has proven concretely that they don't exist." (one could conjure literally anything this way and then insist it's everyone else's job to disprove it.) and the second is literally just circular reasoning of "I believe it because I want to believe it and I want to believe it because I believe it"- with the implication going even a step further that other people should believe it for this non-reason as well. Surely there are better critiques of 'avowed militant atheist' Hitchen's razor than these two non-arguments? 2603:3018:CD9:100:91:F832:8BC6:36B6 (talk) 21:39, 21 November 2023 (UTC)Phoenix

From the article:

• The idea is that all beliefs are based on other beliefs, and some "foundational" or "basic beliefs" just need to be assumed to be true in order to start somewhere

This idea that all beliefs are ultimately based on "foundational" or "basic beliefs" (that must themselves be taken on faith) has been examined and rejected by epistemologists in the books Groundless Belief and The Retreat to Commitment. A Wikipedia editor more competent than me might want to add these citations to the discussion. Both books argue for a standard of evidence based on broad coherence of tentatively held beliefs. The author of the second book had strong intellectual and personal connections to Karl Popper. 213.123.14.238 (talk) 14:15, 16 January 2024 (UTC)