I’ve dealt with Bible societies who work in China and they claim that there are around 70 million Christians (of all types) there. Last I bothered to research it, there were about 175 million Christians in the USA. So I was surprised by your statement. Are you suggesting that there are many more “hidden Christians” than previously thought?
Just wondering. I don’t keep up with such ministry contacts as much as I used to.
Well, i stand corrected. 70 million is still a lot. Most, still, are YECs. That number, also, is growing.
And it’s not like this hasn’t happened before in China!
The General Tsao’s Chicken that Americans so enjoy is not an Old Dish, but a relatively new dish, named after the general who put down the largest Civil War in China’s history: the Taiping Rebellion, or more correctly: the Civil War of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. It was an indigenous Chinese crusade to defend a home-grown Chinese form of Christianity!
The revolt, “. . . based in Tianjing (present-day Nanjing) with a Christian millenarian agenda to initiate a major transformation of society. A self-proclaimed convert to Christianity and brother of Jesus Christ, Hong Xiuquan led an army that controlled a significant part of southern China during the middle of the 19th century, eventually expanding to command a population base of nearly 30 million people.”
"Devolving into total war—with any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets — the conflict … ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war, and the largest conflict of the 19th century, with estimates of the war dead ranging from 20–70 million to as high as 100 million…
Footnote: Cao, Shuji (2001). Zhongguo Renkou Shi [A History of China’s Population]. Shanghai: Fudan Daxue Chubanshe. pp. 455, 509.
@Patrick, you don’t have to say a thing. We get it.
If the question is simply “How does one get Wikipedia to correct their error about Adam and Eve”, the answer must be “Change the editorial policy of Wikipedia.”
And that’s no more going to happen than modern science (we’re told!) will include God. So we must learn to live with misinformation in the public domain.
Here is the ad against YEC that will air nationally again this year.
I see that you engaged on that in the Talk Page, and didn’t get that far. I think the best way would be to get your findings on Adam and Eve published somewhere trustworthy and non-sectarian (such as a peer-reviewed journal of some sort, or maybe a reputable news source). Then one can change it on Wikipedia and cite that as a trusted source. To make changes on big-name articles on Wikipedia, you need to know the editing culture and standard practices so that they can survive being challenged by frequent contributors.
Maybe. Though, I think actually it might require some one other than me to make the changes. Alternatively, there might be value in starting a new wikipedia page on the historical Adam.
That talk page discussion was infuriating.
I think you can’t just start a new Wikipedia page unless there’s sufficient external sources that cover it. Otherwise you might get tangled in a lengthy arbitration about whether the new article should be merged into the main one.
It was, but I am not surprised. I’m far from being a frequent contributor but I notice that the most dedicated Wikipedians are not interested in debating details of the content of theories. As much as possible they try to include something only if there’s a reliable source which says that. If reliable source says X, then you write X. Even if from logic X implies Y, you cannot write Y. And it is a big no-no to try to defend your own work (or something connected to you) on a Wikipedia talk page. (There have been cases where people wanted to correct something they knew to be wrong on their Wikipedia biography, but were not allowed because that information had not been published anywhere.) So, Wikipedia articles are more similar to news articles written by journalists rather than traditional encyclopedic articles written by an expert in the field.
There is an immense amount of work published on the historical Adam. An immense amount.
If you have 20 citations all pointing to a specific conclusion, I am optimistic that if someone other than you submitted the material as a separate topic… at the worst it might get subsumed UNDER an existing topic… and treated as an organic unit.
I have seen a growing trend to take a separate page and turn it into a sub-page.
The reverse happens as the sub-page continues to become larger with additional findings.
Additionally, the following sentence which we are disputing:
their literal existence is incompatible with human evolutionary genetics.
is currently written without citation. So a zealous Wikipedia editor can simply add the [citation needed] tag, and that would probably be less controversial than outright changing that sentence. You really need to play by their rules to make significant inroads.
Sure. I agree. However, I think I’ll always be at a disadvantage because I’m going to have a point of view. In a year, there will be a book and articles to point too. We should revisit it then, and see if some others can make the change.