This user, in accordance with the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, discloses that he has been paid by Zwolle for his contributions to Wikipedia. I have to perform volunteer work in order to receive benefits from the Dutch Commune Zwolle. This leaves me totally free to choose for whom I do volunteer work and totally free to write as I please and whatever I please. The Commune exercises no control whatsoever upon my edits, and it would be illegal for them to do so. Seriously, if they try to influence my edits, I will immediately call the Police.
I will give you the basic rule of Wikipedia: we have to find to the best of our abilities what the academic mainstream says and then kowtow to it. See WP:ABIAS. The basis of Wikipedia is kowtowing to mainstream science and mainstream history. You may disagree with our choice, but that's what Wikipedia is. It is you who have a choice, Wikipedia doesn't.
Stated otherwise, Wikipedia is WP:RS-positivism and WP:CHOPSY-supremacism. For Wikipedia the gold standard is what they teach at Ivy League, that is the WP:NPOV view.
See Tgeorgescu - Edit Counter - XTools, Tgeorgesco - Edit Counter - XTools and Robot citare - Edit Counter - XTools. Just if you wonder: all these are my own accounts, but I have never used them together in order to violate WP:RULES and two of them are inactive for years. Tgeorgesco was mainly a French Wikipedia account, since my name sounds odd in French, and the other is a ro.wiki bot. Both identities are properly disclosed on their own wiki. The invention of the global account and the integration of the citation bot in ro.wiki made their use obsolete.
My specialism at Wikipedia is unwelcome news. That is, welcome for mainstream scientists, and unwelcome for the prejudiced public. Why? Because science and WP:SCHOLARSHIP are great goods, and I did not become a Wikipedian in order to doctor them.
It took me some time to understand this, since it seems the peak of irrationality, but some people feel offended by learning or by mentioning objective facts.
According to quacks and wackos, I belong to a great technofascist project called Wikipedia. In respect to WP:LUNATICS, Wikipedia is a WP:BATTLEGROUND, I have no doubts about that. Except it's not just me against the woo peddlers, it's Wikipedia against the woo peddlers.
Wikipedia loves mainstream science, mainstream medicine, mainstream history, and mainstream media with a good reputation for fact checking. There are people who hate these, so they obviously hate Wikipedia.
People may certainly accuse me of kowtowing to the medical orthodoxy and to mainstream science, but they forget that around here that is seen as very desirable. It's a feature, not a bug.
I edit with honesty and integrity, but these can only be understood by people who work inside the system. Newbies and POV-pushers usually don't understand that, though some of them may get the point that the agenda of Wikipedia is opposed to their agenda. I can be pretty harsh with POV-pushers, but within the system of Wikipedia I am a moderate.
I don't defend a political ideology (party politics), but the "ideology" of WP:BESTSOURCES. Obviously, the best sources have norms and values written into them. But that isn't my problem.
I have no dog in the fights of: Cambridge vs. Oxford, Harvard vs. Yale, Protestants vs. Catholics, and Atheists vs. Christians. But I do have a dog in the fight of Ivy League Bible scholars against religious fundamentalists. And I do have a dog in the fight between mainstream religion scholars and fringe cults. I do have an ax to grind against pseudohistory, especially against fundamentalist pseudohistory. I'm arguing often against people who think that mainstream science is Ahrimanic and mainstream history is spiritually harmful.
The difference between me and your usual anti-cults keyboard warrior: I don't believe that the religious orthodoxy is right. I don't promote my own religion. I don't evangelize people. I don't think that converting to my religion is necessary for salvation. I don't believe in postmortem sticks and carrots based upon subjective beliefs.
I'm not a villain, nor a WP:RGW-warrior. I'm simply a popularizer of mainstream WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Of course, some people are terrified by it. But that's what Wikipedia is for. A lot of people say they love mainstream academic learning. But that no longer holds when it's mainstream academic learning about their own religion. If their religion gets creamed at Wikipedia, it does not mean it's because of some villain, nor because of malfeasance. Malcontents should not blame me for what full professors write.
Some people do not understand that Wikipedia isn't a WP:FORUM or WP:SOAPBOX for aggrandizing their religion or atheism. It is supposed to have university-level information about religion, especially from mainstream universities.
According to WP:CENSOR: Some organizations' rules or traditions call for secrecy with regard to certain information about them. Such restrictions do not apply to Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations; thus, Wikipedia will not remove such information from articles if it is otherwise encyclopedic.
People who say that religion scholars do not necessarily condemn cults have a point: it is not so much a matter of moral outrage, as it is a matter of emic vs. etic.
"Neutral" point of view is a misnomer. It should be called normative point of view. See for details WP:MAINSTREAM and WP:NOTNEUTRAL.
Wikipedia is meant for rendering the knowledge of the global elites. So, Wikipedia is not an ideologically neutral project. It's not left vs. right, nor conservatives vs. liberals. It is a matter of the well-educated people against the superstitions of the masses. Populism is the promise of quick fixes through abandoning science and rationality.
The only difference between me and a troll is that I defend academic learning (WP:CHOPSY or WP:BESTSOURCES, take your pick), while trolls and activists seek to maim it and delete it from Wikipedia.
We (Wikipedians) do not seek to be jerks, but this is not a website whereupon skewing the scientific or historical truth would be tolerated. We do not tolerate WP:SOAPBOXING for cults, fundamentalism, racism, nationalism, homophobia, transphobia, quackery, pseudoscience and pseudohistory. While politely expressing disagreement with the academic consensus in the talk pages is not a reason for blocks or bans, repeated misbehavior is.
As far as Wikipedia is concerned, WP:PROFRINGE is a nuisance. Repeat offenders will get topic banned.
If you're seeking to sue me for libel because of my Wikipedia edits, no Dutch or Romanian lawyer will accept to plead the case for you, since I will get them disbarred.
You might think that I am a lousy debater. (Because often I logically develop arguments very thoroughly, stating all their logical implications, and many people do not like that.) But I won the vast majority of my Wikipedical debates. And even when I lost such debates, very often the loss of my opponents has been much greater than my own loss. So, it might look as if I am spewing incomprehensible jargon and odd arguments, but I am a very effective Wikipedian. (When one is not accustomed to thinking philosophically, philosophical arguments are odd by default, according to "normal people".) And I often prevail because I only add to articles information that can be reasonably construed as being in accordance with WP:RULES. Not claiming that I'm infallible, but I am mostly right about that. I am not always right, but I do seek to serve Wikipedia through all my edits.
If people draw the logical implications themselves, they consider themselves smart. If I draw all the logical implications, it is considered offensive.
Yup, my writing style is aphoristic, but I am not without logic. If you have read Rudolf Steiner, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, Ramana Maharshi, Osho Rajneesh, etc., you will recognize my style. Although religiously/philosophically I am not upon the same page with them.
These being said, I'm not insensitive to good arguments, based upon the WP:RULES of Wikipedia. What might be a good argument elsewhere might not be a good argument at Wikipedia.
My wiki-anger is directed at the behavior, not at the person. I'm merciless with reducing the quality of our articles, but I do not pursue personal vendettas. That is, if an editor I have criticized addressed their own mistakes, I have nothing against them. But I won't allow them to deteriorate our articles with impunity.
The admins are my friends so long as I obey the WP:RULES.
And of course I appear as a heavy-handed editor: I edit in areas rife with editors who misbehave, so trying to restore WP:RULES and order appears as blunt. To those who are epistemically irresponsible, I appear as an officer of the Thought Police.
When I began editing en.wiki, I lacked WP:CIR, but I wasn't proud, ignorant and aggressive, so I didn't get blocked.
Many Wikipedians can be good editors, provided they know their own limits. If they do not easily get the hints about their limits, they will be topic banned. E.g. when editing about Pedophilia and about Hinduism, I needed feedback from others in order to learn that I don't know much about those topics. But I quickly got the point, so the ban hammer wasn't needed.
So, yes, I got many editors topic-banned. It does not mean I hate them. It only means they had to acknowledge their limits the hard way. It's for their own good, and for the good of Wikipedia.
I'm not incorruptible. Every man has his price. Mine is 250 million US dollars (in comparison terms Trump had to put up a much lower bond). Donate me this amount, and I will stop editing Wikipedia. Non-negotiable. And if there are any tricks, I will return to editing Wikipedia.
A lot of people came to hate me for my edits (adepts of pseudoscience, adepts of quackery, fundamentalists, conservative evangelicals, various cults, political extremists, racists, antisemites). But they are poor, and cannot donate the money needed to silence me. And I cannot be cowered through doxxing, since my identity is already public.
I'm sensitive to criticism. If the criticism is compliant with the WP:RULES of Wikipedia, I make corrections. If it isn't, then perhaps I double down, usually by offering multiple WP:RS for the contested claim.
About Romanian diacritics in the names of the authors/editors in references: if the source provides the diacritics, I use diacritics; if it doesn't, then I don't.
Energy field is a bogus concept, which does not exist in any science, including quantum mechanics. I searched arXiv and bioRxiv for "energy field" or "energy fields", and there are not many results: real scientists do not consider the concept seriously. While energy fields do exist in Star Wars and Blake's 7, they don't exist in science. Energy fields have the same ontological status as leprechauns.
According to Britannica, the energy field is the activity of people who industrially produce energy. According to the US Congress, the atomic energy field is the labor of people who produce nuclear energy.
“Anyone who says, ‘I have a detox treatment’ is profiting from a false claim and is by definition a crook,” Ernst proclaimed in the Guardian 10 years ago.[2]
What about David J. Ley, Nicole Prause, Brian M. Watson, and Jason Winters?
While I respect their positive science, I am not a big fan of psychotherapy. I admit that it can be useful for some conditions, but not for most mental illnesses. I highly regard psychiatry, but not necessarily psychotherapy. To the extent that psychotherapy means healing people through talking to them, I'm skeptical of such approach. I took some courses in psychology, but in respect to psychotherapy I'm still a philistine: I don't think that talks can heal people.
Morals: I don't know how sex therapists treat people and I'm not curious to learn about it. All I need to know is that mainstream therapists do not treat them for sex addiction nor porn addiction, but for other psychiatric diagnoses.
No Wikipedian could WP:CITE a mainstream WP:RS that porn addiction is an accepted diagnosis. I mean a really reputable source which could settle this for the next 30 years.
I mean: once a diagnosis gets recognized by the medical orthodoxy, it becomes very difficult do deny that.
If the medical orthodoxy would accept such a diagnosis, it would be a piece of cake to WP:CITE a WP:MEDRS that it does. Till now, not any Wikipedia editor could fulfill such a demand. And not for lack of trying.
There is an Wikimedia Foundation email for reporting pedophiles. I would be totally amazed if my wiki-enemies did not use such trick before. But alas for them, WMF only bans people based upon real (not imagined) evidence. Since photos and videos can be doctored quite easily, WMF won't fall for AI-generated claptrap. Besides, I do have some lookalikes, like the policeman Bogdan Gigină (he is now dead), the economist Tiberiu Porojan, the Dutch murderer Gökmen Tanis (the only difference I see is hair color), the businessman Mihai Rotaru (from Clever Taxi, there is a subtle difference in the nose), a juridical Romanian-German translator from Constanța (I remember from his CV that he graduated from Western universities, but I cannot find his name now), Romanian minister Cristian Ghinea, some others whom I don't remember their names. A presumably Dutch burglar from nl:Opsporing Verzocht or its corresponding TV show from Overijssel looked remarkably like me, including the goatee I formerly had—I had a full beard at that time. And, yup, I once starred in Opsporing Verzocht myself, because I accessed an ATM from Amsterdam (close to my university) when money mules were getting their money from it (having some small pauses in order to not attract attention). But I was never charged with a misdemeanor, let alone a felony. So, if you think that schizophrenics are likely to get into legal trouble: it wasn't my case. Schizophrenic does not mean stupid and it does not mean aggressive. My delirium was concerned with "thin" metaphysics (as William James put it) so it had almost no consequences for my practical deeds. It seems I were extremely lazy at drawing practical conclusions from occult ramblings, even when others insisted there are many practical conclusions of occultism.
Maybe I look like the religion scholar Alex Norman, but I don't have enough data to draw a firm conclusion. Or like the businessman Ovidiu Lăzărescu (Propoint), again: not enough data.
I have for a long time suspected that disposable accounts engage in vandalism and trolling, especially upon articles which concern the Bible. Now I have evidence for my claim: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Valen2929/Archive.
I'm a murderer of myths. That's why I studied philosophy. That's why I studied a science. Philosophy and science were constructed in opposition with myths. Philosophers kill myths. Scientists kill myths. That's what they're trained to do. That's their job.
I do not claim to be a jurist, a psychologist, or a therapist. But you cannot prove that I'm not. Why? These are not regulated professions in the Netherlands, so the Dutch law forfeits any proof that I'm not a jurist, or a psychologist, or a therapist. Psychotherapist, on the other hand, is a regulated profession.
Just to make sure: I'm not a scientific researcher, but I do perform a lot of scientific literature research.
In many countries if you exercise critical thinking you land in jail. Or you will get lynched by an angry mob.
So, yes, this is an actual answer to your real question, unlike others who misunderstood your question and were lecturing you that you cannot have freedom without critical thinking.
The question was: How does a lack of critical thinking cause personal freedom? To this question I have replied. I have answered you why showing evidence of critical thinking is an obstacle to personal freedom. It's a bad world out there and many regimes and many people hate the guts of those who display critical thinking skills.
A lot of people get extremely upset if you apply critical thinking to religious or political dogma.
In certain parts of the world, keeping mum about source criticism of the Koran is a matter of self-preservation.
In certain countries, keeping mum about the moral failings of their president is a matter of self-preservation.
Often, keeping mum that official ideology is at odds with reality is a matter of self-preservation. Telling that official propaganda lost contact with reality is risky.
Admins are hated by outsiders for taking action, I'm hated for my thoughts.
I'm not hated for breaking the WP:RULES, but for obeying them.
On the French Wikipedia, experienced editors were very helpful, and have corrected my spelling mistakes; admins were also very helpful, and defended WP:V information as a matter of principle. On the other hand, on the German and Dutch Wikipedias, people are very jealous about their own languge and do not tolerate even minor language errors. In my experience at the German Wikipedia, those editors don't even rely upon WP:RS very much, but upon their own musings about what the articles should say. An editor reverted my edits based upon multiple WP:RS by five professors, two doctors in theology, and a WP:V mention of many newspapers from many countries, simply because she think she knows better, and I would be according to her a Man of Mission. I.e. they don't listen to WP:RS, they revert based upon gut feelings. I was threatened with a ban simply because of mentioning multiple WP:RS and because of mentioning the policy WP:OR (which they apparently don't abide by, even if they have it in their own language). Why write verifiable statements when they could claim consensus advancing made-up statements? About Abd-ru-shin they wrote Some of his readers consider him to be the Messiah which is not WP:V in any WP:RS (I'm not denying it's true, it just does not appear in any reliable source). "He claimed to be the Son of man (Christianity)" or "he claimed to be the Messiah" or "he claimed to be the true Christ" are WP:V in several WP:RS, but the insiders of de.wiki don't care about that. At the Dutch Wikipedia an edit based upon mainstream scientific research by Paul J. Wright (academic) and Debby Herbenick (doi: 10.1007/s10508-022-02406-4) was reverted claiming racist POV. While for a mainstream professor in the US being a racist amounts to being toast.
Half-way between a verifiable statement and an unverifiable statement is an unverifiable statement. On the German Wikipedia it's WP:CONSENSUS acting againstWP:RS and WP:V. They don't really need WP:RS, they just have their "true prejudices" which they abide by. You see, the sources don't really matter, since the editors decide by Diktat what the sources should have said. And they threaten with the ban hammer just because they don't like what WP:RS say.
So, yeah, cultists get to whitewash articles about their own cult because calling a spade a spade is an absolute, and only a Sith deals in absolutes. Happily, we don't have such policy at en.wiki.
Morals: en.wiki, fr.wiki and nl.wiki say it's an objective fact that Abd-ru-shin called himself the Messiah. de.wiki says that's a subjective idea. Two books University of California Press and Cambridge University Press and a scholarly journal from UoCP say it's an objective fact, so pretending it's just subjective is ridiculous. Those three wikis clearly state what he print-published about himself, while de.wiki whitewashes it to a subjective belief of some of his readers. It's not rocket science: he either published that claim or he didn't. Mainstream WP:RS agree that he did.
I do not ask you to believe me. Believing me is stupid. Checking my sources is smart. Believe the sources, not me.
I do not pretend to diagnose anyone, be them Wikipedian or not. I simply state my views upon paranoid rants as opinion privilege, without claiming that my statements would amount to a medical diagnosis.
I am a person with schizophrenia. Thanks to Risperidone, my rational thinking has been restored. Does that mean I am completely healed? Probably no. Due to the persistence of negative symptoms, my situation is technically not distinguishable from high functioning autism.
I also suffered from paranoia, so now I am biased against paranoid thinking and conspiracy theories. I might make sport of these, but I was myself afflicted by these in the past.
I am aware of WP:NOTTHERAPY, and using the above information against me in disputes will be considered a gross violation of WP:NPA. Please do not do it, it won't be taken lightly by admins.
If you think that having schizophrenia is bad, needing to be taught lessons in objective knowledge, critical thinking, logic, and rationality by a person having schizophrenia is even worse. So, don't pity me. Pity all who are more irrational than me. I had to oppose people who are more hateful, spiteful, fanatical, extremist, and paranoid than this schizophrenic. Some people make repeatedly the point they're more irrational than a schizophrenic.
Morals: that's why I'm prone to think that people are sick or brainwashed rather than being inherently mean. So, I see those who attack us as victims rather than perpetrators. If this website can be seen as merciless it is because it deals in knowledge rather than anything else. And some POVs have mercilessly lost the game. No amount of pleading will make Wikipedia accept germ theory denialism as valid. It has lost the game, and we rightly shun it. It is not our task to be loving and caring of those who push such POVs, our task is to be epistemologically responsible. Of course, that is no reason to behave like jerks, but some POVs are shunned, and will remain shunned. We don't have to seek to pamper POVs which are epistemically doomed. So, yes, I think that some people are simply insane,[3] and unto the minds of others cults or ideologies do terrible things. Having an worldview is not the problem, having a fanatical worldview is.
Saying that 2+2=5 is dumb, not merciful.
There something a lot of people have problems getting it: we don't change the Schrödinger equation just because we have empathy for someone else. So, there is no room for censoring Wikipedia articles just because we feel empathy for someone else. We don't edit based upon "feelings, nothing more than feelings". We're not here so that people can feel good about themselves (many subjects of biographic articles fall under WP:PROUD, so, yup, many people do not like having Wikipedia articles about themselves), we are here in order that they learn something.
Many people comparing their own epistemic responsibility with my epistemic responsibility will find out that the answer is not flattering, so they should quit comparing themselves to schizophrenics. It's not written in the stars that schizophrenics are dumber or more misinformed than they are.
And being a schizophrenic is no reason for being ashamed, on the contrary, I am proud of what I have achieved in terms of rationality, objective knowledge and academic learning despite my mental illness. Seen progress in modern medicine, schizophrenia is no longer the scary sentence it once was, same as syphilis is no longer a terrible death sentence. I owe my sharp reasoning power to Big Pharma. Nothing to be ashamed of. In other words: psychosis can be healed, delirium can be healed. People should appreciate more the power of atypical antipsychotics.
John Forbes Nash Jr. was a schizophrenic and he won the Nobel prize. Some biographers speculate that Isaac Newton was a paranoid schizophrenic. I don't know if Nikola Tesla was a schizophrenic, but he was certainly insane.
People who cuss me and threaten me with rape should look at themselves in the mirror: they're definitely more beastly than a schizophrenic. That's what their "lofty ideology" made them become. An admin clearly told them that you aren't welcome here.
And it should not appear that I'm whining about that, because personal attacks against me produce in me eustress rather than bad stress. If I were opposed by reputable mainstream scholars, that would give me pause. But being opposed by WP:FRINGE peddlers produces eustress.
"Such people don't endorse objectivity and the objective truth" We are talking about fundamentalists here. I have met people with a better grasp of reality in the psychiatric ward of the local hospital. Dimadick (talk) 14:10, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
The cases I have presented at WP:SPI are strange, really strange. You can guess they were posited by a person having schizophrenia. Which isn't always a bad thing: my success rate is very high. A success rate of 50% is not impressive when predicting the tossing of a coin, but it is highly impressive when spotting WP:SOCKS among 48 million accounts, of which more than 100 thousands can be regarded as active.
Such reports may make their readers feel uneasy, they need to be investigated nevertheless.
Wikipedia editors are allowed to promote the wildest fringe theories in the talk pages. As long as they do not enter that information into the articles, you should sit back and take a deep breath.
Speaking of the motivation of the editors is dissuaded at this website, since it can be construed as WP:PA. But for me it is essential to have some idea of someone else's motivation before I revert their edits. And, yup, sometimes I analyze 20 of their edits in order to revert a picayune edit which is marginally bad.
If you seek to accuse me of violating WP:POLEMIC, please first read [3]. While this user page could be construed as an attack upon fundamentalism, my vitriol comes nowhere near the vitriol I have reported there, and got closed without action.
Accusing me of being an atheist is mystical delirium (i.e. a wacko pretends to read my mind and decide that I'm atheist). I think that the identification of agents of the New World Order, me in particular, is paranoid delirium. People who call me NWO agent are psychotics. Diatribes against NWO, Illuminati, Freemasons and Jews are paranoid schizophrenia.
Calling me a leftist is delirium, for the same reason. It's not even insulting: it's ridiculous for completely lacking rationality.
I don't side with Christians, I don't side with anti-Christians, I side with Bible professors from the most reputable American universities.
I don't attack religion, like Richard Dawkins, but I like to cream religious fundamentalists. And I'm not even offensive about it, but defensive, I simply defend the integrity of Wikipedia as WP:MAINSTREAM encyclopedia based upon WP:SCHOLARSHIP.
Modernism basically means the Enlightenment. And radically rejecting the Enlightenment means being anti-EU and anti-US.
My religion: I believe in two Jewish prophets (Einstein and Spinoza). I recognize two Messiah: Vasily Arkhipov (vice admiral) and Stanislav Petrov. Hint: if anyone in historical record has a believable historical claim of being the Savior of the human specie, they come closest to that.
I am a donor to the CIA blog. This explains my familiarity with Bart Ehrman's works.
I know several words of Ancient Greek, of Latin, and very few words of Ancient Hebrew. So, the irony is that many rambling fundamentalist POV-pushers are better qualified than me to perform WP:OR on the Hebrew Text or the Greek Text. If the standard of our debates were WP:OR, I could never win debates about Bible scholarship.
If people say "I have this religious belief", I have no authority of telling them to believe otherwise. If people say "My belief is science/history/sociology/etc.", that is a testable conclusion, and Wikipedians test it according to WP:VERECUNDIAM. So, yes, if you say "This is my religion and this is what I believe as a matter of religious faith", then I'm very tolerant. If you say "My holy book is logically, scientifically and historically faultless", then I'm merciless with such assertions. If you say "I don't eat pork, because of my own religion", fine, no problem with that. If you say "Eating pork once a week is unhealthy", you are expected to produce extremely strong WP:MEDRS in order to WP:V your claim.
The WP:CHOPSY view upon the Bible, in 1½ hours: SATAN'S GUIDE TO THE BIBLE on YouTube. The view that Bible scholars are from Satan does exist, but Wikipedia considers it paranoid delirium.
In the mainstream academia the idea that the Bible is inerrant or infallible or historically accurate is dead in the water. It is not Bart Ehrman's fault. He is not its mastermind.
Mr. GIBERSON: When you ignore science, you end up with egg on your face. And the Catholic Church has had an awful lot of egg on its face for centuries because of Galileo. And Protestants would do very well to look at that and to learn from it.
— Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve, npr.org
When intelligent design proponents will do empirical science instead of rhetorical ploys, the scientific community will listen. That day hasn't come yet. Phillip E. Johnson died before he could know the hypothesis of intelligent design. You see, nobody took care of formulating ID as a cogent hypothesis.
Otherwise, I simply believe in the Creation theory of the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître.
I seek to align my own views to mainstream science, mainstream history, and mainstream archaeology. I do not seek to align mainstream science, mainstream history, and mainstream archaeology to my own views.
And this is the trick of science: even if scientists start by assuming a blatant falsehood, given time the scientific community will work its way out of that falsehood and reach valid insights. It happened e.g. with W.F. Albright assuming that the Bible is trustworthy guide for archaeology. The scientific community initially got convinced by Albright, but that did not have the status of religious dogma. Through accumulating archaeological evidence, a scientific revolution happened in Syro-Palestinian archaeology. The Bible is no longer seen as historically accurate, even in its narratives that look a lot like historiography.
Conservative evangelical apologetics should be considered historical negationism. It has no honorable place inside our encyclopedia.
About the debate between William G. Dever and Israel Finkelstein: I care more about what Dever says, since when Finkelstein claims something, it may or may not be true. When Dever grudgingly agrees with Finkelstein, it is really a done deal.
If you ask me, it is not completely impossible that a spiritual world exists, but there is no need that it is populated with ghosts, spirits, angels, demons, gnomes, sylphs, fairies, and other items of popular mythology. If such world exists, I expect it to be totally unlike how people have described that it looks.
According to DNA analysis I might have the following ethnicity: Kosovar, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, or Romanian. As combination of two ethnicities: Moldovan + Thessalonian Greek, or Hungarian + Ashkenazi Jew.
Drawing the conclusion: genetically I am preponderantly Romanian, with a smaller share linked to Israel (which could mean Druze, Samaritan, or Ashkenazi Jew, meaning Jews from Israel before the 20th century Aliyah).
What about my homeland? Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. I can love a country without feeling the need of doctoring the harsh truths about it. Inside this encyclopedia if you think that national pride trumps objective fact you will be booed off the stage.
I view my country according to objective knowledge, and I write about my country according to objective knowledge.
I an not a nationalist, Hungarian, Romanian, Dutch, Jewish, or otherwise. If anything, I am an internationalist. For fellow Romanians who accuse me of treason:
A pune scopurile statului și ale națiunii mai presus de independența intelectuală și a pretinde totodată că ele sînt juste și morale este unul din tipurile de „trădare” pe care le denunță Benda.
— Andrei Pippidi, Julien Benda, Trădarea cărturarilor. Humanitas, București, 1993. p. 10.
I'm not anti-Romanian, I'm not anti-Hungarian either. I'm not anti-Ukrainian, I'm not anti-Russian either. I'm not anti-Israeli, I'm not anti-Palestinian either.
I do not know a lot about the history of Romania and I do not pretend to know a lot about it (I know more about the history of Ancient Israel than about the history of Romania). I only get involved in disputes about Romanian history when there is something fairly obvious to mention (such as wholeheartedly rejecting pseudohistory from being endorsed by Wikipedia) or when POV-pushers are misbehaving. I am dispassionate about the history of my own country and I love historians who keep a cool head and the debunkers of pseudohistory. I am not dispassionate about rejecting pseudohistory, which has no honorable place in a WP:MAINSTREAM encyclopedia. So, yeah, my wiki-expertise is mostly about pseudohistory, rather than about positive history. For the most part, I'm not concerned with real facts about the history of Romania, but merely with stifling pseudohistory and overblown nationalist propaganda. Because crass, overblown propaganda is an insult to my intelligence. Nationalist activists lack the awareness that such propaganda makes them look around here like boorish idiots. And that coming across like boorish idiots is no way of honoring their own country. They lack the awareness that among educated people their talking points look silly and ridiculous. They think they aggrandize their own nation through Holocaust denialism. While for educated people that is a good reason for avoiding them.
If an Indian, American, British, Nigerian or Brazilian scientist makes an empirical claim about the body, they're expected to prove it, and that proof must be replicable. Why should it be different for Chinese scientists? — User:WLU
According to Romanian nationalist POV-pushers, I would fake being a Romanian, I would live in Transnistria, and I would be the brain of a pro-Hungarian propaganda network. Not only is that extremely funny, but becoming the object of urban legends is someway flattering. I thought that only happens to famous people. N.B.: doxxing others is not allowed, but there is no rule against doxxing myself. Nor against researching what people say about me on the internet. I am entitled to Google my own name and my own username. Don't like it? Then don't talk about me on the internet! If you explicitly mention me, then your posting is fair game.
My problems with the Romanian nationalist troublemakers were:
they are political extremists—Romania does not need being advertised as the land of extremist hillbillies; they think that being racist, homophobic and antisemitic means aggrandizing the Romanian nation, we think that's a reason for showing them the door
they indulge in pseudohistory (like Dacianism)—while en.wiki could use some WP:CHOPSY-loving Romanian patriots, indulging in such fanciful theories depicts Romania as the land of brain-dead (or brainwashed) hillbillies
they cannot behave properly inside the Wikipedia Community—what got them indeffed was mostly not their POV, but the way they behaved towards other Wikipedians, again Romania does not need advertising as the land of uncivilized people
My LinkedIn account is severely outdated due to being unused
My Facebook account is mostly unused (I briefly log in once in a while)
My Wikia (Fandom) account is largely unused
I do use my YouTube account for messages
If I did IRC that was many years ago, and I no longer do. I never did IRC in respect to Wikipedia.
So, if you read something by Tudor Georgescu on social media (WMF servers excepted) it's a 90% chance that it is from somebody else having the same name.
I don't beat around the bush, but I don't have a foul mouth either. So, offline attacks which use a foul mouth or employ extreme or vicious slander/libel are a joe job. When I'm angry, I seek to answer intelligently, instead of uttering obscene slurs. (Yup, it works much better than "Take a deep breath.")
I have IPVanish as VPN. But, no, I cannot edit Wikipedia through it, since it is globally blocked. I recently got Google One VPN, but the same applies to it.[4]
About the joe job: I recently often lose LAN connectivity, so it's quite possible that hacking attempts are ongoing. I use a professional firewall solution, but you never know. I wasn't hacked yet, but it surely can happen. Now I am triple firewalled and triple NAT-ed. AFAIK someone is bypassing my firewall and performing portscans through the NAT, that's all they can do, and it crashes my LAN. I think this fixed it: "firewall: do not emit link-local address on IPv6 network outbound NAT".
Google has announced me today that 50 of my passwords were pwned. Google didn't know my Wikipedia password, and Have I Been Pwned: Check if your email has been compromised in a data breach says it was not pwned. The website does not list some of my e-mail addresses as pwned, although Google says they were pwned. The leak included long, complicated passwords which cannot be bruteforced.
And, yup, to get a 0-day exploit for my firewall, one would have to pay a fortune. And yup, one would need 0-days for three different firewalls.
I will soon get a new modem. That means my IPs will change. I hope I don't get DS-Lite, but as I will be editing mostly through IPv6, that won't be a big problem. If you're asking why do you see only one IP, see this.
I have understanding for people who risk going to jail for contributing to Wikileaks. But I have no understanding for people who risk torture and going to jail for the privilege of citing mainstream media inside Wikipedia.
Here is why: suppose that same conditions apply in the West for citing mainstream media, except that it becomes a privilege. Every citizen who wants this privilege has to pay a hundred dollars per month. This isn't a big sacrifice to ask for, but I'm afraid that the vast majority of Western people would simply refrain from citing mainstream media, instead of paying a hundred dollars per month for such privilege.
The motto of the AIW is conservata veritate, which translates to "with the preserved truth".
This motto reflects the inclusionist desire to change Wikipedia only when no knowledge would be lost as a result.
The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
Many thanks for your tireless efforts in keeping articles clear of spam and other nonsense. Wikipedia is a better quality project because of hardworking and conscientious editors like you!--Hu12 (talk) 14:03, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
This is for all your tireless and heroic efforts last night defending the article Yahweh from our perennial troll friend Wittgenstein123, even in the face of some seriously deranged (and somewhat incomprehensible) attacks on your personal character. I am sure he will probably return eventually, but, for now, I just wanted to let you to know how much I appreciate your work. Thank you so much! --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:28, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
Thank you for working to fend off the latest in a long line of Bible literalists over at Belshazzar, as well as your tireless defense of keeping this article aligned to what academics believe over the last few years. Ichthyovenator (talk) 22:17, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
Thank you so much for your efforts to keep Wikipedia away from being a place of religious promotion. — Kaalakaa(talk) 09:10, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
For acting reasonably even when doing so aggravates the unreasonable. John Carter (talk) 02:19, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
The LGBT Barnstar
For the work done in editing the articles regarding the LGBT community and for the firm activity against bigots inside Wikipedia. Alexandru M., 8 februarie 2017, 12:41 (EET)
Member and friend of File Threads Database. FTD has been replaced by SpotNet.
Spoken languages: Romanian, English, French, Dutch (level 4, now called level B2, according to diploma NT2-II, do not confuse it with Wikipedia:Babel level 4, which would mean native or near-native speaker).
Reads and understands: Italian and a bit of Spanish.
Religious qualifications: Bible knower (in respect to the literal meaning of the verses; through self-study). From a Sola Scriptura perspective, I am a god and a Son of God.
My ideal for Wikipedia: academic learning in the image and likeness of Ivy Plus.
Briefly: I am committed, for the most part, much more to truth than to tribe. For The True Believer I'm from Satan with a mission to deny WP:THETRUTH. E.g. Napoleon Săvescu, who isn't a Wikipedian, has harassed me outside of Wikipedia for my edits concerning history and religion (yup, it isn't harassment if you don't tell it to the Police). I don't know if he realizes, but his criticism of my edits boils down to this: the historical method is the most pestilential doctrine ever vomited out of the jaws of hell.[9][10][11] Because the historical method, as practiced by WP:CHOPSY, necessarily leads to what he sees as defilement of the history and religion of my native country. What he sees as defilement is simply academic-level history writing. WP:CHOPSY do not pander to piety and neither does that Wikipedia. If all reputable universities have plonked him, it is not our task to WP:RGW. And I am certainly no traitor of my country merely because I state that he got plonked. If he got plonked it is his fault, not my fault.
If your basic complaint about my edits is your professor ran over my dogma, you are completely pitiful and pathetic. We are unapologetically in favor of the academic consensus, so you don't belong here. As Neil Asher Silberman stated, what we're doing is just continuing a struggle a scholarly struggle that's been going on for a hundred years the boundary just now happens to be in the story of the Israelites and the Israelite Kingdom and it's moving forward slowly to separate religious literature and spirituality from what we call history.
The scientific method and the historical method do not hate religion. There is no hate of ants required in order to crush ants nests with a bulldozer. Modern science and post-Enlightenment historiography destroy the intellectual clout of traditional/fundamentalist religion. If you want to know what I feel: I am annoyed by their ceaseless attacks upon Wikipedia, but I feel compassion/pity for their own religion.
If you think that the above violates WP:POLEMIC, we already have WP:NONAZIS and there should be WP:NOBIGOTS. Fundamentalist POV-pushers are a problem in religion articles and somebody has to tell them clearly that they do not belong here. Sorry if it seems like vitriol, this is simply the conclusion of an ongoing fight against bigoted vandals and true believers. ... Here's the bottom line: I call a troll a troll. I call a POV pusher a POV pusher. Accuracy is not incivility. ... I am not here to promote "Wiki-Love". I am not here to get my narrow, judgmental mind in a tizzy because someone used a Naughty Word. I am here to help with the enormous, challenging, exceptionally special group effort of creating the most amazing knowledge resource since the Library of Alexandria. Ask yourself, Why the hell are you here? Perhaps you'd be happier on some online community preaching some kind of feel-good pretend pablum than here. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.KillerChihuahua.
My Wikipedia edits in a few words: conservatively mainstream academic POV. This does not mean that I would be socially conservative. I am not politically active, but I find that classical liberalism is a good idea. What about feminism? You may consider me a pro-life and pro-porn conservative feminist. (Yup, I don't support abortion, but I don't support christofascism either.) Politically, you could consider me a tolerant conservative: I have conservative values, but I am tolerant of people who don't. My models are Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. That does not mean that I would blindly endorse everything they did or stood for. For me the representatives of the liberal Western world are Reagan, Thatcher and Bush 41. Although not politically active, I'm a Dutch conservative like People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. Which in US would be called liberals. Hint: PPFD voted in favor of gay marriage. You could call me a neoliberal centrist, although I am a socially and ecologically minded neoliberal (as worldview, but not politically engaged).
Also, I have never claimed publicly that pedophiles are right. Why? Because I do not think that. I'm not opposed to locking them behind bars.
If you think supporting Reagan is a problem, learn that I don't see much difference (ideologically) between him and Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. Anyway, that applies to a time when Noam Chomsky was right that Republicans and Democrats were two wings of the same party. As one Quoran has put it, the Clintons should be considered Reagan-era Republicans.
For me "conservatives" mean rational people who love science, arts, scholarship, and believe in classical liberalism. I don't construe Christian nationalism to mean conservatism. Reagan and Thatcher stood for classical liberalism, not for right-wing anti-liberalism. I can have a great time at Wikipedia because I am not a right-wing anti-liberal.
I am never opposed to rendering objective facts and I do not happily delete factual information, even if it fails WP:N.
While I do have a POV supporting mainstream science and mainstream scholarship, I do not perform WP:MEAT edits for skeptics' associations. I am my own man in respect to how I edit Wikipedia. I do believe rational skeptics and scientists like Nicole Prause and David J. Ley, but I don't lionize them. So, yes, I do promote rational skepticism, but I don't think it is my business to promote the persons associated with the skeptical movement. I respect them, but I don't lionize them.
A word for newbies which I seem to be in conflict with
A word for newbies which I seem to be in conflict with
Wikipedia has WP:RULES which govern how editors should edit, how should they behave and how conflict gets mediated. Everybody is entitled to occasional mistakes, but persisting in mistakes will get you blocked from editing. Our wish is, however, that WP:RULES breakers repent from violating our rules and become instead productive editors. The decision to obey our rules is always personal, but it has enormous consequences for one's activity inside Wikipedia. I cannot decide for you, but I can tell you that it is wise to obey our rules. So, it's not that I like to see you blocked. I would like that you learn from your mistakes and become a productive editor. But if you are not up to the task, you will be blocked. I cannot ban you, in fact there is a single editor able to ban you from Wikipedia, that editor is you. The key point about getting to read about our rules is changing your behavior. We want you to behave according to the rules of our encyclopedia, if you cannot behave you will be blocked or banned. I will report you to admins if it is clear to me that you don't want to comply with WP:RULES.
I only revert edits for which it is clear to me that they are WP:CB (speaking from the viewpoint of academic learning), deteriorate the article or violate WP:RULES. I don't revert if these are uncertain. I think that you need to make up your mind if you are for or against our WP:RULES. If you're against our rules and act on that, you'll soon find yourself in hot water. If your edits are WP:PAG-compliant, they will likely stay, otherwise every experienced editor will have to revert you. By saying this I am not aggressive, I just tell it as it is. (Dutchies don't beat around the bush, but bluntly tell you what's wrong.)[12] I'm blunt but not mean. I could appear mean, but in fact I am only defending the norms and values of this website. I am very harsh on bigots, but reasonable and conciliatory with reasonable people. With people which present themselves as reasonable, I am much more conciliatory than other experienced users. If I can reasonably give you the benefit of doubt, I will do it, otherwise I have a low tolerance for bullshit. I have only become an anti-bigotry vigilante because of the unending attacks of fundamentalists upon our secular encyclopedia. I am very tolerant with those who don't deride science/history/our encyclopedia. According to prisoner's dilemma, The strategy is simply to cooperate on the first iteration of the game; after that, the player does what his or her opponent did on the previous move. Depending on the situation, a slightly better strategy can be "tit for tat with forgiveness". I'm usually acting as the first line of defense: just because you fooled me it doesn't mean your edits will be accepted by other established editors.
The question is not so much whether Wikipedians should be tolerant or intolerant, but: tolerant with what? And: intolerant with what?
I am neither humble (thinking that nothing can be really known, so everything goes) nor cocky (thinking that I know everything).
I don't hate editors as persons; I hate rule-breaking. I consider that any editor can change his/her mind/behavior at any moment. Few edit warriors do that, but that's another matter. As long as you know when to stop, you can get away with almost anything at Wikipedia. It's not the mistake which is a matter of being blocked or banned, but persisting in that mistake. Exceptions: outing, child grooming, and legal threats. When the community thinks that you made a mistake, accept the judgment of the community.
If you get criticism compliant with WP:RULES, accept the criticism and comply with it. If you have started a conflict, stop the conflict and offer your excuses for it. If you seek to avoid blocks or topic bans through WP:SOCKS you will get banned from Wikipedia. We are tolerant, but not retarded.
I'm not absurd: if you give me WP:RS showing that you're right, I will write myself from your POV. Seriously, the deal is this: give me sources that you advocate a major academic POV and I will write from this POV. The article masturbation is replete with WP:RS/AC claims precisely because I listened to critics of the article. I mean: I did not oblige their wish to adulterate the medical consensus, but I have provided rock-solid sources for the medical consensus. That had nothing to do with me being mean or obstinate, but mainstream science simply wasn't on their side (and still isn't). Since I'm not in charge of the scientific consensus, they were barking at the wrong tree. I'm not a scientist; I have nothing to add to or subtract from mainstream science. I render it for what it is. So, even assuming I was prejudiced against their POV (since it does sounds like an outlier), there was no need of doctoring the medical consensus. They felt treated like outcasts, but even if I wished, I could not offer them a place at the table of mainstream science. There are many people who think they will change mainstream science through editing Wikipedia—but that is a completely wrong approach: Wikipedia is subservient to mainstream science, mainstream science isn't subservient to Wikipedia. What those people really asked is playing fast and loose with the facts of mainstream science. We cannot do that.
Wikipedia has a purpose, it has norms and values; those who violate these get blocked or banned. I am prepared to explain you these norms and values, otherwise to those that do not heed these I believe that giving the cat enough rope it will hang itself. But we're not a clique: everyone who earnestly obeys our WP:RULES may join us. (Yes, yes, Wikipedia has to have rules; we cannot run such a website without rules.)
If you are here to promote pseudoscience, extremism, fundamentalism or conspiracy theories, we're not interested in what you have to say. Imho, using Wikipedia to promote pseudoscience is worse than using it to promote criminal behavior (seen that definitions of what is a crime largely depend upon the country). For my contributions to Wikipedia I could get the death penalty in several countries (e.g. in North Korea for liberal-bourgeois propaganda, in Iran and Saudi Arabia for blasphemy, sorcery and LGBT-friendly propaganda—what Wikipedia sees as mainstream science, they see as propaganda; in totalitarian countries ideology trumps reality).
If you are here to complain about my edits in respect to porn addiction: there is no official document from WHO, AMA, APA, Cochrane or APA which would imply that sex/porn/masturbation addiction would be a valid diagnosis. None of that has anything to do with my own person, does it? WP:ACTIVISTS could not figure out if I am pro-porn or anti-porn, so they accused me of being both. Same applies to being pro-Christian and anti-Christian: some have accused me of being outright Antichristic, while others have accused me of writing ads for born-again Christians.
The idea that the Bible was copied 100% exactly, that it lacks any mistake and any contradiction, that it has not been severely contradicted by mainstream archaeology is bigotry, not Christianity. The definition of Christianity isn't "the Bible is without error".
In the long term, reasoned argument and good quality sources works, hysterical accusations of bias and malfeasance simply get you shown the door.[13]
— Guy Chapman
"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."[14]
Blaming me for the fact that Wikipedia has rules that get enforced is deeply idiotic. I did not ban your pet theology from Wikipedia. I lack the power to do so. It is simply so that pushing fringe POVs is not acceptable to this encyclopedia.
The recipe for getting past my "theological" objections is quite simple: don't challenge WP:RS/AC (if there happens to be one) and use WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV for evangelical/traditionalist positions.
Having your POV not touted by Britannica is not a violation of human rights.
Having your POV not touted by Larousse is not a violation of human rights.
Having your POV not touted by Wikipedia is not a violation of human rights. Wikipedia does not violate your right to believe what you please, it just does not assume by default that you're right.
If your edit gets deleted because the Ivy League finds it is rubbish, it is not discrimination, and it is nothing personal.
Wikipedia is crowdsourced, while Britannica and Larousse aren't. That's the only difference. For the rest all three have the same ideals and values.
You are welcome to edit here, but you must do so within our guidelines, asking you to do that is not bullying. Slatersteven (talk) 15:52, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
“
A little bird was flying south for the Winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground into a large field.
While he was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on him.
As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was.
The dung was actually thawing him out!
He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy.
A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him.
Morals of the story:
(1) Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy.
(2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.
(3) And when you're in deep shit, it's best to keep your mouth shut!
”
Remember: truth is my weapon and if you misbehave, I will use it against you. If you want to accuse me of something nasty, present evidence or shut up forever. I have great respect for truth. At the same time I am a mastermind at weaponizing truth. I like wiki-persecuting bigots, pseudoscientists and quacks. Do you think I'm mean? The watchdog must bite. That means that I'm not a fool, and I will report to admins the violations of our WP:RULES. It also means that I don't shy away from using mainstream scientific/scholarly works against cults, quacks, and pseudoscientists. It does not mean I violate your right to believe what you please. But here at Wikipedia you have to behave according to our own WP:RULES.
According to Psalms 82:6, all human beings are gods and Sons of God.[15] According to John 10:33-36, wherein John is quoting JesusChrist's own words, all human beings who heard the Scripture talking to them (e.g. heard the Scripture being preached by a priest or pastor inside a church) are gods. According to Acts 17:28, all human beings are the offspring of God (Elohim, YHWH). Till here this is simply reading what the Bible has to say, literally, without any kind of "interpretation" (other than the purely literal one). The Bible is a print-published source, peer reviewed by Dr. Jerome of Stridonium and Dr. Martin Luther (they established two different canons for the Bible; both such canons regard as valid and authoritative all verses quoted in this argument).
All humans are thus gods and Sons of God. I am a human being (and I heard the Scripture being preached in churches), therefore I am a god and a Son (offspring) of Elohim (YHWH). This is a valid syllogism based upon assumptions derived from the Bible. Does it count as interpolation? Since Sir Francis Bacon[16] affirmed that syllogisms are no tool meant to increase our knowledge (or: science), we may consider that performing a syllogism upon some assumptions is not interpolation. This is thus encyclopedic knowledge according to Wikipedia:Verifiability criteria.[17] Not.
By the way, Genesis 6:2,4 and Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7 speak about the Sons of God (using a capital letter is justified, since the Hebrew writing does not have capital letters, thus as far as the Bible authors are concerned "sons of God" and "Sons of God" are one and the same "thing", or the same idea). Therefore the Bible says that God has more than one Son.
So, I do not claim such titles only for myself[18], but for everybody else as well, because so says the Word of God expressed in the Holy Bible. The good news of the Bible tells you that you are a living god, making you thus aware of your divine nature.
I don't want to be associated with the absurdities of the Bible. Therefore, I make it more clear: the above is not my opinion about the Bible, but the opinion of the Bible about me. Is it absurd? Yes. Is it my absurdity? No.
If you think that the trick would have worked for Jesus, go to the closest synagogue and tell the Jews that you are God simply because you can cite Psalms 82:6, and see how that works. Hint: Jesus's answer was just too smart and subtle to be understood by an angry mob of blasphemers hunters. And quite probably no one knew it by rote. The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament as you know it did not exist yet. So: which Bible? There was no Bible, there was the Pentateuch and a bunch of other writings. You call it Bible, for them it was not biblical Scripture. Was it an important Jewish writing? Yes. But regarding it as part of the Bible is anachronistic for Jesus's own time.
If you want to know what I think of Christianity: objectively speaking, rationally, there isn't a compelling reason for either adhering to or rejecting Christianity. As Søren Kierkegaard understood, joining and leaving Christianity are utterly subjective decisions.
I get attacked by both sides, rather vigorously, and my personal view of it is that I'm not actually against Christianity at all, I'm against certain forms of fundamentalism and, and, so virtually everything I say in my book are things that Christian scholars of the New Testament readily agree with, it's just that they are not hard-core evangelicals who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. If you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible then I suppose I'd be the enemy, but there are lot of Christian forms of belief that have nothing to do with inerrancy.
— Bart Ehrman, Bart Ehrman vs Tim McGrew - Round 1 at YouTube
Morals: for most Christians Jesus=God, so it's not weird that he claims to be a god (according to the historically inaccurate narrative). But for mainstream Bible scholars, he was a regular apocalyptic Jewish preacher, an ordinary man, so to speak, and the claiming to be a god seems highly fanciful.
Fanciful historians have no idea that Harvard professors teach the following about the Bible/Christianity:
Modern Bible scholarship/scholars (MBS) assumes that:
• The Bible is a collection of books like any others: created and put together by normal (i.e. fallible) human beings;
• The Bible is often inconsistent because it derives from sources (written and oral) that do not always agree; individual biblical books grow over time, are multilayered;
• The Bible is to be interpreted in its context:
✦ Individual biblical books take shape in historical contexts; the Bible is a document of its time;
✦ Biblical verses are to be interpreted in context;
✦ The "original" or contextual meaning is to be prized above all others;
• The Bible is an ideologically-driven text (collection of texts). It is not "objective" or neutral about any of the topics that it treats. Its historical books are not "historical" in our sense.
✦ "hermeneutics of suspicion";
✦ Consequently MBS often reject the alleged "facts" of the Bible (e.g. was Abraham a real person? Did the Israelites leave Egypt in a mighty Exodus? Was Solomon the king of a mighty empire?);
✦ MBS do not assess its moral or theological truth claims, and if they do, they do so from a humanist perspective;
★ The Bible contains many ideas/laws that we moderns find offensive;
• The authority of the Bible is for MBS a historical artifact; it does derive from any ontological status as the revealed word of God;
— Beardsley Ruml, Shaye J.D. Cohen's Lecture Notes: INTRO TO THE HEBREW BIBLE @ Harvard (BAS website) (78 pages)
This POV is enacted all across Wikipedia and you will be crushed if you oppose it. We do not need jokers who deride academic learning.
Recipe: historical method + Bible... and the fundies will cry "Blasphemy!" History well-done and fundamentalism well-done leave no other option. None of that has anything to do with me. It's only a matter of time till fundamentalists will realize that the historical method is the enemy of their faith. Probably stuff for a book called The Academic Learning and Its Enemies.
One day they will say like Luther, The historical method is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.[19] Fundamentalists made their mind that the Big Bang and the theory of evolution come from Satan. Next they will make up their minds that the historical method and the science of archaeology come from Satan. As one fundamentalist wrote about the scholarship about the Hebrew Bible, they found it to be outside of traditional Judaism - with an initial assumption that the books were ordinary human documents and were thus within the regime of academic literary theory and methods.
Should we compare what gets taught at Harvard about the Bible/Christianity with the idiosyncrasies of bigoted agitators? By design Wikipedia chose for Harvard and against rendering fundamentalist theology as objectively true.
I write about Christianity sine ira et studio: I don't write only favorable stuff, nor only unfavorable stuff, but I write from an outside and disinterested perspective, based upon sources favored by WP:CHOPSY. Of course, POV-pushers construe this as mockery of their own religion, but Bible professors from Harvard and Collège de France don't. There is a distinction which some people don't get: I do not cultivate mockery of religion, I cultivate higher academic learning about religion. Most of the time, I simply report what WP:CHOPSY Bible professors say about the Bible, both good news and bad news. At David I bring the bad news, but at Christ Myth Theory I bring the good news. David and Jesus have historically existed, that's by and large not the problem with the historicity of the Bible.
As they say, "The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys". I cannot afford to buy cars, planes and yachts, so my toys are ideas.
For intellectuals ideas (including religious dogmas) are toys. Your religion is for us a provider of toys. One man's religion is another man's laughing stock. Again: Bible professors from Harvard and Collège de France don't construe as mockery what I write here about your religion.
I'm not speaking only of myself, I'm speaking about intellectuals in general. There was a pastor saying he had a child on a youth camp, and that child was asking nasty (read: intelligent) questions. And that pastor strongly punched the kid in his chest saying: "What do you think, that this is only a game?" Yes, we intellectuals play the game passionately, most of us with honesty, but in the end it's just a game. The scientific and social progress are based upon declaring that ideas are not sacred, but toys for intellectuals. We have merely human ideas, and those who pretend their ideas have been granted by God or gods are primitive cheaters. An idea obtained through reading or hearing is a merely human idea, regardless of whether there is a God.
Morals: if your religion is ruined by a kid asking smart questions, it is not much of a religion.
Hint: there is already Strathern, Paul (2002). Dr. Strangelove's Game. ISBN978-0-14-029986-1. saying that economics is in the end a game.
What my wiki-enemies don't understand is that I'm pro-facts and pro-WP:SCHOLARSHIP (of the WP:CHOPSY sort).
Wikipedia's policies, particularly the neutral point of view policy and sourcing policies, are not just acceptable to Christianity, but (if you believe Christianity is true) to Christianity's advantage.
Those who seek to whitewash our articles must be thinking "NPOV is anti-Christian" or "NPOV is anti-anthroposophic". I can understand why fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals think that NPOV is anti-Christian. And, frankly, seen that anthroposophy peddles all kinds of WP:FRINGE beliefs, I do agree that, indeed, NPOV is anti-anthroposophic.[20]
So, yes, the bias of Wikipedia, namely being a WP:MAINSTREAM encyclopedia, based upon mainstream WP:SCHOLARSHIP, does not offer a level playing field between opponents and supporters of anthroposophy. Since, well, the task of mainstream scholars is to exercise critical thinking, and those who have WP:FRINGE beliefs are not particularly pleased by critical thinking. Or by exposing facts which were supposed to remain hidden under layers of difficult wording (yup, Steiner's translators have to take care to keep the level of difficulty when they are translating). E.g. I have read a whole book on the meaning of life, written by Rudolf Steiner, and he had never cogently put his view of what is the meaning of life, even hidden under the veil of difficult esoteric language. I mean he made no positive statements about what the meaning of life is supposed to be, according to him. Instead of honestly saying what he meant, his book seemed of consisting of fables and divagations, never reaching a concise conclusion. I was impressed by the book, but he never overtly told therein what he meant.
So, anthroposophists believe that putting their teachings in easy to understand language means throwing pearls to the swines. This makes them see religion scholars and historians as enemies, instead of disinterested scholars seeking the historical truth. Every independent scholar who ever cited stuff from Steiner's books is accused of citing out of context. Apparently, one should cite the whole book written by Steiner, preferably without any inkling of personal reflection. Same as Heidegger banned his book Being and Time from being published together with a critical commentary.
And they think that accusing Rudolf and Marie Steiner of racism is sacrilegious, and should therefore be banned from Wikipedia for the protection of their religious sensibilities (thing which is overtly banned by WP:CENSOR). They will never be content with citing reliable sources to that extent, they will always find some excuse why it does not apply to anthroposophy, and if they cannot find one, they will perform edit warring in order to whitewash the articles. And they will not relent until it becomes obvious to all observers that the anthroposophists were engaging in whitewashing.
They accuse me of being a schizophrenic, but, hey, I'm not the one peddling irrational beliefs at Wikipedia, I'm not the one making infantile demands that inconvenient truths should be deleted from Wikipedia because they are "lies". They cannot WP:CITE any WP:RS why those truths are lies, they are just lies by fiat, simply because they think they know anthroposophy, while mainstream scholars merely pretend to know it (according to anthroposophists). Any inconvenient truth should be whitewashed, because that's what WP:ACTIVISTS do in public forums. In their view, any article about Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf schools, anthroposophical medicine, biodynamic agriculture, and so on, should sing praises to the superhuman genius of Steiner. And they gradually lost control of Wikipedia articles about anthroposophy since WP:PSCI has been adopted as website policy, and WP:MEDRS has been proclaimed as binding for medical articles, while the guideline WP:FRINGE did the rest about agriculture.
They don't understand that Wikipedia does not pander to piety, that it does not give equal validity to Ivy League scholarship and occult ramblings. And they tell bald-faced lies that anthroposophy is not a religion, although mainstream scholars know for a century that it is a new religious movement. They made me curious about that, so I researched the matter, finding 50 scholars who endorse the view that anthroposophy is a religion, or a new religious movement, or a Christian heresy. And these scholars are of very diverse faiths: Jung was a New Age leader, the Pope who declared it a heresy was a Catholic, I have cited very conservative evangelicals, but I have also cited atheists and agnostics, I have cited mainstream religion scholars and debunkers of cult pseudoscience. Why? Because I did not took the verdict of the Sacramento court at face value. And I have provided a paper in law science explaining why that court had to reach that verdict, and that reaching it testifies of an outdated legal framework. I.e. the judge was not "wrong" for deciding that verdict, but the whole US legal system did not keep up with social change.
Why do religion scholars keep studying anthroposophy? Because it is, you know, a religious movement. Religion scholars study it because it is a religion.
If anthroposophists think they are the light of the world and the salt of the earth, they are in for a rude awakening: mainstream science despises their teachings, evidence-based medicine despises their teachings. It's inane to ignore how mainstream scientists and mainstream MDs think about their cult. Many of Rudolf Steiner's prophecies about his teachings getting soon endorsed by mainstream science failed miserably. Arts are a matter of taste, in philosophy we agree to disagree, but mainstream science and evidence-based medicine have an extremely low tolerance for Rudolf Steiner's schizophrenic delusions.[21][22][23]
As Hammer pointed, anthroposophical medicine and biodynamic agriculture can be commended for their lofty ethical values, but alas not for their science. And, it is indeed so: ethics and architecture are the two fields which Steiner got right. Steiner was a racist ontologically, not ethically. Note: I like Steiner's ethics, but I don't have to like his architecture in order to state he achieved a great deal of success in architecture (at least in some countries).
Anthroposophists who accuse me of trolling forgot this: spreading the message of WP:CHOPSY and WP:BESTSOURCES is not only not trolling, but it is also highly valued inside this encyclopedia.
And we already have an essay thereupon, see WP:PROUD.
And I'm not saying that my edits are perfect, but they get incrementally better, and I respond to constructive criticism.
Let me spell it out clearly: if you don't like that WP:NPOV is anti-anthroposophic, you can shove it! Maybe I don't like what NPOV entails about abortion, but I'm not given a choice. Explanation why NPOV is anti-anthroposophic: WP:GOODBIAS. Or, if you need a scholarly explanation: [5].
We don't have a rule against citing unpleasant WP:RS. If anthroposophists do not like my edits, they should sue Staudenmaier, McKanan, Hammer, and Kurlander—these scholars are the source of such information, not me. The anthroposophists seem largely unconcerned with the existence of such scholarly works, but the anthroposophists got extremely angry that those works got WP:CITED at Wikipedia.
Just in case I wasn't clear: at Wikipedia we follow WP:BESTSOURCES, and we have no right of ventilating our personal opinions. So, yes, I do support the human rights of anthroposophists, but I do not believe they are alethically correct, according to mainstream WP:SCHOLARSHIP. While they have the democratic right to hold and spread false beliefs, they don't have any leverage of cowering Wikipedia into saying they're right.
WP operates on the basis of well-sourced information, so you can't just dismiss it as vandalism when it's properly cited. — User:Saqib
While Anthroposophists do have the legal right to hold and spread false beliefs, they don't have any power of coercing Wikipedia into saying their beliefs are true. The website policy WP:NPOV is anti-anthroposophic. So, by design, Wikipedia is biased against cult pseudoscience and cult pseudohistory.
I'm not saying that the God of the Catholic Church is true, while the God of Rudolf Steiner is false. All I'm saying is that they are different gods: the Holy Trinity does not consist of seven Elohim. Whatever else may you think about Rudolf Steiner, it is pretty clear he revived Ancient heresies, and the Catholic Church took notice of that. Thinking he would have been somehow exempted from being lambasted by the Catholic Church was a grave mistake on his behalf. Anthroposophists who claim that the Catholic Church should not have declared Anthroposophy heretical are highly disingenuous and outright ridiculous. There are some matters in which the Magisterium of the Church still has a choice, in this matter it didn't. And that regardless of fascist agitation which infected Italy at that time.
Let me set this straight: I do not engage in defamation. But I do fully engage in citing mainstream WP:SCHOLARSHIP. And people who have a problem with that can shove it. For Anthroposophists, publicly rendering mainstream scholarship is bad PR. But for Wikipedia not being able to render mainstream scholarship is an existential threat.
Anthroposophists do know Anthroposophy from the inside, but that does not mean they have mainstream scholarly learning about Anthroposophy, same as many devout orthodox Christians have no mainstream scholarly learning about Christianity: being a Christian believer often does not mean one reads mainstream Bible scholarship. See emic and etic: Anthroposophists express an emic view, and that is not compatible with the requirements of Wikipedia, which demand an etic view.
Even if my personal opinions about Steiner would drastically change, I would write pretty much the same about him here at Wikipedia, since facts are facts, scholarship is scholarship, and Wikipedia is Wikipedia, regardless of my personal opinions. I did not become a Wikipedian in order to doctor unpalatable facts. The tragedy of Anthroposophists is that my professors ran over their dogmas. Mainstream scholars have exposed Steiner for attempting to make science subservient to his spiritual dogma. And it seems that in the world of mainstream science, his efforts met very little success. He did not get recognized as a medical genius, but as a peddler of quackery. He wasn't recognized as the agricultural genius who could feed eight billion people, but as peddling bizarre and outdated agriculture.
I WP:CITE mainstream WP:RS. There is no law against that. Wikipedia has no rule against that. On the contrary, Wikipedia is built mainly upon citing mainstream WP:RS. So, Anthroposophists could resort to libelous attacks, childish tantrums, or shenanigans, but none of those will stop Wikipedia from rendering the message of mainstream WP:RS. Because at the end of the day, that's the mandate of Wikipedia, and it has no mandate to pamper the public image of cults.
The mandate of Wikipedia is to share knowledge, not to shelter people from unpleasant knowledge. — User:Beeblebrox
Professor Dale Martin: Write it down. Say it tonight, before you go to sleep. Say it in the morning, when you wake. Every day of the semester say it before you go to sleep. Say it when you wake. Can anybody tell me what it means? “Doubt everything.” Doubt everything. Okay. And that includes me, because I’m going to lie to you a lot all semester long. Or, at least, somebody will accuse me of that I guarantee.
So, I do not ask you to believe me. Believing me is stupid. Checking my sources is smart. Believe the sources, not me.
Anthroposophists accuse me of being guilty that Anthroposophy "got dealt a really really bad hand by the internet." The truth is that many of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines would have to radically change in order to avoid that. E.g. introduce a new policy saying that if a full professor runs over a dogma, Wikipedia should believe the dogma, not the professor. Otherwise, getting dealt a really bad hand is highly unlikely to change. So, at this point it becomes a parody to blame me (or a group of editors) for it, since such bias is deeply built inside the system of Wikipedia.
Hi, DisciplinedIdea. I'm not familiar with the original dispute, but I think I see where there's a disconnect. You write, Ask some guys expert on phase-change how limited science is? Wikipedia consensus knows better? I think this is where there's a communications breakdown. Wikipedia is not about what's true, only what the sources say. This took me a while to reconcile with my own background, but it's an essential part of fitting in on this website. So if Wikipedia came to a consensus that 1+1=3, and had reliable sources to back that up, then that's what would be published. There's plenty more nuance and I can elaborate if you like, but I know this was (for me, at least) the hardest part of adjusting to Wikipedia; that it doesn't matter what's right, only what the preponderance of reliable sources say. I hope this helps clear some thing up, and my apologies if this message is unwelcome. — User:EducatedRedneck
When speaking of "heresy", I don't say that heretics are "wrong", nor that they are "right". I don't recognize that there is a True Religion™, nor a True Spiritual Science™. Protestants have said that Catholics are heretics, Catholics have said that Protestants are heretics—I can understand how they use that word, but I'm not taking sides. The accusation of heresy speaks in the name of the church which is dealing out the cards, and I don't belong to any church. I don't think the way religion works allows religion to be true, nor that the objective reality allows for a spiritual science.
Why for the past years I hold a virtual monopoly on the articles Anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner? Because I was prepared to read what scholars have stated about them. I am not stopping anyone from reading whatever else scholars have written about them. I just don't believe that mainstream scholarly claims about them should be swept under the carpet. And the tragedy of Anthroposophists is that, besides cursing me and accusing me of vandalism and trolling, they don't have an answer to my edits (an answer which complies with the WP:RULES of Wikipedia). Because, at the end of the day, I was simply citing positive statements based upon WP:RS. Deleting such information from Wikipedia would indeed be vandalism, just adding it does not amount to either trolling or vandalism. Just how many times do I have to explain them that they have no recourse against citing mainstream WP:RS inside Wikipedia? It's not illegal, it's not immoral, it does not violate any WP:RULES. It is simply what Wikipedia is made for. In the end, they will be forced to admit that I'm doing what's right for Wikipedia. Because that's the rationally unavoidable conclusion, despite their contempt for my edits. I mean: I might not be right for their cult, but it is right for Wikipedia, and that's why admins have consistently sided we me, because I am here to serve Wikipedia. If Anthroposophists think that Wikipedia shouldn't consider Anthroposophy WP:FRINGE, quackery, pseudoscience, and pseudohistory, they're out of touch with reality. I mean: they don't have to agree with Wikipedia, they just have to agree that Wikipedia is bound to do that. Since those scholarly works were published, it was more or less unavoidable that their claims make their way to the pages of Wikipedia. It is not a matter if, it is a matter when reputably published information gets cited at Wikipedia. I was very active at collating these sources, but, again, any other Wikipedian is free to do the same. Just as the Anthroposophists were unable to stop me, I would be unable to stop such Wikipedians (as long as they abide by the WP:RULES).
I'm not infallible in judging sources, but I'm willing to test my ideas through receiving feedback from bona fide Wikipedians, at the usual noticeboards. Meaning I obey the consensus reached at those noticeboards. In case I plan no to obey it, I seek to get it overturned at those very noticeboards before I venture to perform edits contrary to it. E.g., so I learned that the writings of McKanan and Munoz are indeed reliable sources, even if I doubted that before such consensus.
See Materialism has doomed the West from the beginning on YouTube. If you laughed at the speaker's argument, you will surely laugh at Steiner's arguments. Hint: they are the same crass polemics against liberalism and materialism. And I'm not even claiming that the West is morally superior. But there are profoundly ridiculous ways for rejecting a bogus claim. Propaganda cliches and misunderstood anthropological concepts look comical, but let's not forget those are popular in certain parts of the world.
^I do not formally have the legal right to bear the title "Master of Arts" together with my name. However, MA is the common (customary) English translation of my title "license in philosophy" from University of Bucharest, Romania. Also, MA would be the proper English translation of my Dutch title drs., since this title has been replaced with MA following the Bologna Process, in so far as philosophy graduates are concerned. I do have the legal right to bear the title BSc together with my name. I use the degree M as stipulated by Dutch rules for translating pre-Bologna Dutch titles to post-Bologna international degrees, which do not allow me to use MA, but I have to use M instead. A combination of M with BSc is allowed according to Drs. A Jansen, MBA?, since they are different titles (i.e. my BSc was not a prerequisite for obtaining my M).
^E.g. I think this book is a product of mystical delirium: Mayer, Thomas (2022). Covid Vaccines from a Spiritual Perspective. Raubling, Germany: CLAIRVIEW BOOKS. ISBN978-3-910465-00-8. It does not mean I diagnose them; I just offer my two cents as a lay person. If you want to know my reasoning: there are three very different kinds of COVID vaccines, so they can't all act the same way (spiritually).
^The Romanian baccalaureate is no BA or BSc, it counts as high-school diploma, i.e. the diploma for finishing general and mandatory secondary education.
^I.e., doctorandus; drs. is equal to MA in the Bachelor/Master system, in so far as philosophy graduates are concerned. The Netherlands recently introduced the Bachelor/Master system (according to the Bologna Process); in such system change the old title doctorandus was replaced by the degrees MA and MSc, which are equal in value with drs.
My drs. title is genuine and legally recognized by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but it does not mean dr.mult. (multiple PhD degrees).
^It's just tongue in cheek; don't take it seriously. Actually, you should never WP:VERify claims to WP:PRIMARY religious sources.
^... since I am not delusional about it. All I did is properly read what the Bible has to say about this issue. I am guilty of no more than plain reading. If a reading disability is preventing you from understanding the literal meaning of these Bible verses, I recommend you the program Kurzweil 3000. If theologians had such a program some thousands years ago, a lot of churchly dogmas would have been written substantially differently from today's version.
^Cf. Steinsson, Sverrir (2024). "Rule Ambiguity, Institutional Clashes, and Population Loss: How Wikipedia Became the Last Good Place on the Internet". American Political Science Review. 118 (1). Cambridge University Press: 235–251. doi:10.1017/S0003055423000138. ISSN0003-0554.
^Treher, Wolfgang. Hitler, Steiner, Schreber – Gäste aus einer anderen Welt. Die seelischen Strukturen des schizophrenen Prophetenwahns, Oknos: Emmendingen, 1966 (newer edition: Oknos, 1990). ISBN3-921031-00-1; Wolfgang TreherArchived 2005-02-12 at the Wayback Machine
^"Hitler, Steiner, Schreber". trehers Webseite! (in German). Retrieved 30 December 2023. Eingeordnet in eine psychiatrische Krankenvorstellung lassen sich Hitler und Steiner als sozial scheinangepasste Schizophrene klassifizieren.
^Black, Jonathan (2007). The Secret History of the World. Quercus Books. pp. 157, 388. ISBN978-1-84724-167-2. Yet when Jung met Rudolf Steiner, who believed in disembodied spirits, including the planetary gods, Jung dismissed Steiner as a schizophrenic. [...] Indeed, when Jung met Rudolf Steiner he dismissed him as a schizophrenic.
This user, in accordance with the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, discloses that he has been paid by Zwolle for his contributions to Wikipedia. I have to perform volunteer work in order to receive benefits from the Dutch Commune Zwolle. This leaves me totally free to choose for whom I do volunteer work and totally free to write as I please and whatever I please. The Commune exercises no control whatsoever upon my edits, and it would be illegal for them to do so. Seriously, if they try to influence my edits, I will immediately call the Police.
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