Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of atheist Americans

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. As with any other list or category of people by religious/philosophical/political affiliation, the inclusion of any particular article is a matter for talk page discussion. postdlf (talk) 22:09, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

List of atheist Americans

List of atheist Americans (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Why is this relevant? There isn't a list of atheist Brits, or atheist Chinese etc. Couldn't this be done as a category instead? Specto73 (talk) 18:36, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

• Delete Fails WP:LISTN. As nominator says, there are no other nationality-based lists of atheists. Additionally, there are no other religiously-based lists of Americans. Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 19:09, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:15, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Atheism-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:15, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:15, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

• Well, we do have other "religiously-based lists of Americans", such as List of American Muslims and List of American Catholics. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:19, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
  • As for the "Couldn't this be done as a category instead?" argument, Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates addresses this, and lists the advantages of each. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:54, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
• Delete A big problem is that atheism is defined by non-assertion, as opposed to assertion. Some of these people publicly and openly identified with a religion, and only philosophically supported atheism. Religions are a wholistic thing that one has to proactively embrace. Beyond this, it is open to question if the statement "I do not believe in God" is one of atheism or agnosticism.John Pack Lambert (talk) 07:45, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Okay but isn't that an argument to delete every atheist people list and category? Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:31, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MBisanz ^talk 01:15, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

• Keep Every instance seems to be sourced to RS of person making a declaratory statement of their atheism. See no issues with BLP or GNG. BlueSalix (talk) 23:23, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

This begs the question of what counts as a declaration of atheism. A person could say "I don't believe in God" and yet believe in a different belief system (e.g., one with many gods) which would mean that they don't count as atheists. Besides this, there must be thousands of atheist Americans with Wikipedia pages; building a complete list would require vast amounts of manpower and would rely very heavily upon the interpretation of different editors as to a person's religious beliefs. That, perhaps, is why this has never been attempted for any other nationality. Specto73 (talk) 15:21, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

• Comment Policy-wise, I'm unable to make a significant differentiation between this list and pretty much every list on Lists of Americans. I'm not voting keep, since that would be an other stuff exists vote. However, I think it would be somewhat arbitrary to delete this list while allowing a hundred more similar ones to stand. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 05:22, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein  18:43, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• Keep As I've stated above, we do have a number of lists for notable atheists, per Category:Lists of atheists and master list Lists of atheists. We also have a number of lists for Americans by religious affiliation. I'm not seeing a policy based argument to delete. We have a family of alphabetized lists beginning with List of atheists (surnames A to B) -- eight in all -- but those lists are not sortable by nationality. So this American list would seem to be useful for readers and meets WP:LISTBIO. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:33, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.