User talk:Homestarmy/Archive 4

Fundamentalism

Look I am sure orangemarlin has nothing against you and your compatriots in particular. I do not know how long or broad an association with fundamentalism you have had. I assume you are a Christian fundamentalist but I might be wrong. I think most Christian fundamentalists are good people. I have many as friends. However, there is an element in Christian fundamentalism, particularly in the US, that is pretty unsavory. Is it as bad as the Islamists? Well it is different at least, but in some aspects it might be just as bad. As I said before, it does not excuse bad behavior on the part of Christians however. Remember that great quote from the bible about the mote in your own eye?--Filll 16:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, first of all, I am a Christian Fundamentalist, but the thing is, most Fundamentalists I know do not take that in the negative connotation, because the Fundamentalist movement itself in the early 20th century or so popularized the term, and for us, it means we actually adhere strictly to the Bible and try to really put Jesus's teachings in practice, rather than comprimising Biblical principles for any number of reasons the world presents. Even though its used as a blanket term for anyone claiming to be deeply religious and doing something many people dislike, its not really like that from our perspective. For instance, in every interview i've heard with the Westboro Baptist church who are interviewed by The Way of the Master people I listen to a lot, the Westboro folks reveal an increadibly low regard for the New Testament, or really anything in the Bible as a whole when it doesn't have to do with hating on gay people. Quite frankly, if the Westboro church seem obsessed to many people, that's because they really probably are, and its very dangerous, because from what i've heard from their testimony, they really don't care much about actually being saved through faith in Christ at all. Many times, a lot of these groups people cite as evidence of the "Danger of Christianity" aren't actually Fundamentalist at all when you get right down to it. (Though not all of the time, it is after all Biblical that many people hate the message of Christianity no matter what, i'm not saying you're one of those people, but i'm just trying to use some generalizations here)

But with Islam, the reason I get so edgy about it is because when people compare Islamic Fundamentalism to Christian Fundamentalism that makes me think one of two things, either the people probably dislike Christian Fundamentalism way too much to understand what it is in a more general sense, or don't understand what Islamic Fundamentalism actually does to the world. Once people read up on some of the things that Islamic Fundamentalists do to make headlines every day all across the world, I don't think they could honestly say that Christian Fundamentalism is anywhere near this bad, no matter how much they might dislike Christianity personally. I don't want to get too much into specifics about Islamic Fundamentalism in case you aren't interested, because I really could go on all day, and I wouldn't have to use a single news source from a Christian perspective either. Homestarmy 19:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I want you to understand that I do not "hate" you or anyone. Although I do not believe in your particular religious myth (and only marginally believe in mine), I know that everyone must choose some psychological comfort zone to make it through their own personal lives. I'm pretty much a libertarian as these things go--worship trees for all I care. Why I compare you Christian Fundamentalists to Islamic Fundamentalists is that although you and they make some distinctions between your belief sets, in the end, as an outsider, it all sounds the same and your actions are the same. You both want to establish what everyone should believe. You "hate" those who do not believe like you. The extremists of both of your groups kill people as some sort of divine retribution (and your histories are mutually similar over the past 15 centuries or so). My people have been killed so many times by Christians and Muslims, it's a wonder there are any of us left. Your belief in the Creation myth is exactly like the Taliban's, and that you want to force it on rational people like myself is doubly abhorrent. Worse yet, you and your Fundamentalists want to convert this great Republic into a Christian state. Well, let me tell you what will happen if that ever happens. Every single leader of business, technology, science, etc. will be emigrating to any number of countries, and the USA will become a backwards nation--just like the Taliban run afghanistan. So that is precisely why I stand up to you and your ilk. In the 1930's my people did not stand up to Naziism in Germany. They thought nothing was going to happen to them, even after Kristallnacht. From what I've read of your writing, I do not believe that you are an evil man. You seem to stand for what I think Christianity ought to be--love. I don't care about the christian myth, but I do appreciate "some" of the moral values espoused by it. But I personally believe that you are a minority of your group, and that is what scares me. So, I stand up to your group, and I will never back down. OrangeMarlin 20:30, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

You will get no argument from me about the danger of Islamic Fundamentalists. I am quite aware of the danger and keep very close track of it. There is a Madrassas that is close to where I live here just outside Washington DC which is teaching the children hatred for Americans and nonMuslims. I listened in amazement to interviews with the teachers and principal and students of this tax-exempt school on NPR, after they had been quoted in a long interview in the Washington Times. The people from this school all talked about how great 9.11 was, and how all Americans should be killed and are evil etc etc. It was pretty jaw-dropping. So I know they are dangerous. Now your group might not be in the same category as many others who call themselves evangelicals or fundamentalists etc. But I have had many encounters with people who call themselves conservative Christians, or born-again Christians, or evangelical Christians, or fundamentalist Christians, or believers in biblical inerrancy, etc. And SOME of these people are quite negative. In fact, I probably without too much effort could find some groups that claim to be "Fundamentalist Christians" who might take a look at the The Way of the Master and declare that:

• The Way of the Master is an evil nonChristian cult
• The Way of the Master followers are blasphemers
• The Way of the Master followers are not interpreting the bible correctly
• The Way of the Master is based on the wrong bible or the wrong version of the bible or the wrong translation of the bible
• The Way of the Master is a front for Satan worship

and all kinds of other nonsense. The thing is, there is not much agreement among religions, or among Christians, or among Fundamentalist Christians about almost any issue. One common thread from groups that are pretty anxious to point fingers at others and condemn them is that they are not coming from a place of love and acceptance, but drawing on that vast well of hate that exists in most people.--Filll 20:27, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, in my experience, there hasn't been much coverage of the Way of the Master in the negative sense from other people who appear to be Fundamentalist Christians, just plenty of criticism from Atheists, because the ministry concentrates on them somewhat with an argument against Atheism, which as you might know, is like sticking an electromagnet in a vat of iron shavings :). Its a bit odd too, because their really starting to get around lately, they even had a conference in Atlanta GA, which is just south of where I live..... However, i'm certain you could probably find one or two Universalists who dislike them vehemenently, and they might even claim to be "actually" fundamentalists too, though in my experience they take that title to an extreme negative sense. I understand what you're trying to get at though, but the thing of it is, when examining Fundamentalism, it really is helpful to actually figure out what the Fundamentalism actually should be. For instance, I can never take at face value anything people on the Trinity Broadcasting Network tell me anymore these days, even though some of them are Fundamentalists and its the largest Christian broadcasting network in the world. I always have to think about what people are saying on channels like that, because many times different preachers go off the deep end with the prosperity gospel stuff, even though there's no direct correlation in the Bible between giving the church money and recieving some set exponential reward in return. (And even the indirect correlation is rather specious the way they sometimes use it.). And, likewise, with Fundamentalist Islam, you can look at the Hadith's and Qu'ran for the most part to discover what the adherants should believe and act like, which in my experience, is really quite overwhelmingly negative, due to the belief in abrogation of earlier verses with later ones. (Otherwise, the Qu'ran would be contradictory in several places.)

But the thing is, many of the things Fundamentalist Christians disagree about is safe to disagree about, you say that you have many fundamentalist Christian friends, but they're all individuals, aren't they? I think one thing many people who dislike Christianity too much miss out on is that many of us are actually rather individualistic on the inside, there are a whole bunch of doctrines in Christianity that were developed independently of the early church, and many of which fall under the sorts of things that the Bible says we can be free to disagree on. For instance, most Fundamentalist Christians I know of believe in the death penalty; yet I disagree with it. I certainly am not violating some direct teaching of Jesus or the apostles in doing so, because we were never explicitly ordered to support it, it's just most Fundamentalists see good precedence for it. (And, well, there is good precendece in a way. But it might take me quite awhile to explain why I don't support the death penalty heh.) But when people do start pointing fingers over things to the point of real dislike, often times there's no joke in the doctrinal differences, for instance, non-trinitarians vs. trinitarians. Technically, once again, there's no real Biblical precedence to be explicitly trinitarian, since the Trinity doctrine wasn't developed for quite some time after the bible was written. However, for the most part, almost all non-trinitarian churches I know add on some other heresy which certainly isn't Fundamentalist at all, for instance, there's Modalism which says that God is so much a being of one that He cannot be Jesus and God at once. (This, of course, is quite contradictory to scripture, when God comes out right after Jesus is baptized and says to everyone that He loves His Son, I mean, you'd think people would of figured out that means there's some sort of distinction when God is both up in the sky and on the ground near some water as a human.) That's sort of the thing Oneness Pentecostals go for. But I could go on with this sort of thing all day long, the point is, the doctrine in dispute is often really important whenever two groups of Fundamentalist Christians or otherwise start arguing with each other, and the problem is, there isn't much reason to expect all outside observers to understand what's at stake in each dilemna. I mean, by not being Christian, for them, it wouldn't be their responsibility to understand and reaserch what Christianity should be fundamentally, right? Homestarmy 21:47, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I suspect in time, by the well known process of pejoration, eventually the word "fundamentalist" will fall into disfavor, like all of the previous names for similar groups. I look askance at anyone or any group no matter what they call themselves when I see the following kinds of traits:

• aggressive proselytizing
• hatred of other groups
• elitism
• rejection of reason or rationality or science
• aggressive stupidity
• anger that others do not agree with them
• claims that they are on the one true path and everyone else is evil/damned/cursed/following satan/etc

and similar kinds of things. Of course they are free to pursue their beliefs and activities if they want, as long as they do not hurt others or shove their beliefs on others or violate laws etc.--Filll 21:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, now you're getting into the reason Christians are, well, Christians, which is another debate altogether. When you're in a position where you have personally recieved miraculous conformation that a faith is true, as anyone who's been born again thanks to Jesus should be, then there's little reasonable thing to do but to trust the work which told you about how to be saved in the first place. This work, namely the Bible, tells us that, quite frankly, everyone who isn't a Christian cannot stand up against a God who, by virture of being infinitly good, must also be infinitly just. Therefore, because a Fundamentalist Christian should at least realize that everyone around them is going to be in serious trouble for all eternity without also being saved, then don't you think it would really speak loads about self-centered cruelty if we just thought "Ah, those guys don't need eternal salvation anyway, just let em all burn!"? It sounds pretty cruel and Westboro-esque, that's why so many of us aggresively evangelize in contradiction to that attitude, (And why the Westboro people don't, have you ever noticed, they really never give a message of how to be saved ever?) its because we care. Elitism I don't know so much about personally because, well, err, I haven't actually joined a church because i'm non-denominational......Now, the rejection of reason and science thing is definently a whole other discussion altogether, but I assure you, we certainly don't see it that way. I assume agressive stupidity is linked with that idea too. As for anger, its really hard sometimes not to get angry at people when they don't agree with us, because its sometimes about really important things, and there's no law that says that people we try to evangelize to have to be nice to us when we're talking with them. While that's of course no excuse, the point is, there's still no way for us to be perfect. As for claiming why we're the only path, well, i'd have to basically "proselytize" to you to explain the reason for that, and in my experience that's increadibly hard to do over the internet in a forum-like discussion if the other party really doesn't feel like reading. (I mean, think about it, each side can take hours to think up good responses, and if someone doesn't want to hear it, all they have to do is leave the website in one click, there's no accountability for just leaving the conversation after all :/. ) Not that I would mind it of course, i'm just saying, your comments don't seem like you'd pay attention to me "shoving my beliefs on you" :D Homestarmy 22:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

We all have our own beliefs. And I have mine and you have yours. I do not insist you change to mine. And I am not interested in changing to yours. People frantic to get others to change to theirs do not realize that there are literally THOUSANDS of other faiths/sects/belief systems that all claim they are the true path and so on and so forth, and the other guys are jerks. Well they contradict each other don't they? I am not sure that God, if She exists, is so hung up which particular path one takes to get to Her. I also think that God gave us brains to think, as has been pointed out repeatedly for centuries. So, just like the biblical parable about hiding your talents, do not hide your talents. Use them. I would also point out that there is one group whose activity was widely reviled in the bible: Pharisees. And guess who looks most like Pharisees to me? The bibliolaters who call themselves fundamentalists. And yes you admit to anger. So do I want to join a group that

• admits they do not like thinking or reasoning or rationality, in contravention of the dictates of the scriptures and scholastic study of the most famous Christian intellectuals in the last 2000 years ?
• that acts like the one group that the bible condemns repeatedly, the Pharisees?
• that is a perfect example of the "mote in your eye" saying from the bible? (such as the fundamentalists' dear friend and leader, the very smug and sanctimonious Ted Haggard, but who is just one of hundreds and hundreds with similar stories)
• has representatives that I see doing nothing but spreading hatred?

I instead favor tolerance of all beliefs, except for intolerance.--Filll 22:47, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, see, isn't it much better that I didn't try to launch into evangelism then, since you've clearly expressed you have no interest in it. But the existance of other faiths doesn't make Christianity wrong, its like having a list of answers to 1 + 1 = x, where x is a set of numbers which is about 1000 strong, except nobody can see the 1 + 1 part because nobodies told them what that side of the question actually is. I don't think i'd agree that people like myself do not realize the extremely large number of different religions that all claim to be the right path, (even though many of them explicitly don't) its just that on some fundamental level, there's always something wrong. Try me if you like, name any religion/faith/credo, (Besides Judaism, that doesn't count :/.) and in just 1-3 sentences I can probably give you a reason why its not right fundamentally. (And not necessarily from a Christian standpoint either, there's a lot of logical problems with many of these other religions)

To be honest, that is not much of a trick. This is not rocket science. All religions and sects can find something wrong with neighboring sects and religions. Even over teeny tiny points. The history of religion is full of this stuff.--Filll 21:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

What, 1+1 isn't rocket science :/. Just because other religions and sects all find fault with each other doesn't mean their all wrong, after all, do you really think every criticism each religion has for the others is always compleatly rock-solid in its logic? Some of the things are just downright silly, or require circular reasoning type presuppositions. That's not to say everything Christians say is perfect either, but I find that without figuring out these things for yourself somewhat, its really hard to be confident in what you believe. Homestarmy 22:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with figuring things out for oneself. In fact, I recommend it. However, this is quite contrary to what many religious people would suggest. Most of them want to think for others, and demand that they accept whatever some self-appointed character has decided for them, no matter how ludicrous.--Filll 04:49, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

The parable you refer to with talents, i'm pretty sure that refers to a unit of currency rather than talents people have like juggling or something.

This is a perfect example of how interpretations can be different when one has vague language, and similes and metaphors and alleogry etc. That is what parables are; little stories that have a hidden meaning in them. Of course everyone disagrees about them, because everyone disagrees about every word and statement in every religious text.--Filll 21:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Err, actually, the language isn't really vauge at all, Jesus wasn't exactly speaking English back in Israel 2,000 years ago, He would of been speaking whatever language the crowd could understand and refer to the currency known as a "talent". If you look at the Parable of the Talents article, it seriously does literally refer to talents, which in turn apparently influenced our modern definition of "talent" through a far more extrapolative measure of interpretation. Besides, its not even referenced at the bottom, who knows how prevalent that interpretation is anyway, the point about talents could be made far more easily with later books of the NT which talk more explicitly about using talents that God gives us anyway. Besides, the two interpretations don't even contradict each other, I don't see what the problem is in this instance. While there probably are problems occasionally with other parts of the Bible like this, if the issues aren't looked at individually, then how can you get to the truth of the matter of which interpretations actually make sense and which are total malarky? (Cough Westboro cough...) Homestarmy 22:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Well I have my interpretation, and you are free to have yours. I do not insist that you accept mine, which by the way is the one that I was taught growing up in my religious education, and that I taught to my own students when I taught religion. I am sure many other interpretations are possible and probably there are hundreds of thousands of religious scholarship written about even something as minor as that parable.--Filll 04:49, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

You bring up a good point though with the Pharisees, and you're right, many times people who stand up for Christianity do look far too much like them, in Fundamentalist circles, that's called legalism. What happened was the Pharisees were looked down upon because although they adhered very strictly to the letter of the law, they failed to understand the spirit of the law. (Most pointedly when Jesus warned His disciples about how they put on airs of piety but were really out for another, far lesser agenda. )

At least we agree on this. It is very unChristian if you ask me. And elitist and unpleasant. And hatemongering essentially.--Filll 21:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

It's sort of off track, but what they were doing was similar conceptually to Wikilawyering.

Nextly, I did say that we certainly don't see our lack of acceptance of evolution as a specific disregard for thinking and rational thought, I mean think about it, surely if I for one had no regard for thinking or rational thought, I wouldn't be talking like this, but would of thrown some Jonathan Edwards type rampage or gone POV pusing everywhere, and ended up like This guy? (He's got a huge backstory, just a fair warning, it would take awhile to explain it all) And like you said earlier, you say you have several fundamentalist Christian friends, do you think they all reject thinking and rational thought as a whole?

I think on some issues, creationists and fundamentalists etc reject rational thinking. Definitely. As bad or worse than the people in the Inquisition that imprisoned Galileo or put Giordano Bruno to death. I do not care if creationists reject rationality particularly, but it is FORCING their views on others that I object to strenuously.--Filll 21:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, there are many different ways people have tried to evangelize historically, some better than others, I mean, all you see in the Bible mostly is open-air preaching and people leading by example, so fundamentally, those two doesn't seem as forceful as, say, the inquisition or something like that. Like I said, we're all individuals here, sometimes Fundamentalists have different methods of doing things, and just because some of us might be doing it in a needlessly aggravating way doesn't mean the entirety of our message is wrong :/. (And here, needlessly means like intentionally trying to make people as angry at you and Christianity as possible, not just preaching normally, that's bound to make someone angry no matter how you do it :/.) Homestarmy 22:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I might mention that I am not only concerned with Christianity and Christian proselytizing. There are plenty of Islamic fundamentalists that would like to force others to convert or die. Fundamentalism of just about any form that I have encountered is pretty ugly stuff. Using religion as an excuse to hate others. --Filll 04:49, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Nextly, as I noted earlier, even I have to watch the biggest Christian broadcasting network in the world very carefully to make sure whoever is speaking at the moment isn't hiding some scarily wrong stuff, and besides, we can't possibly all be legalists at once, can we?

If you have to watch carefully, that should tell you something.--Filll 21:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Yea, it tells me I can't just let the Television do my thinking for me, maybe I have to think for myself once every now and again :). Homestarmy 22:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

And on Haggard, actually, he wasn't really very smug and sanctimonious at all when the truth came out, and from everything I read, he didn't appear to act like that when he was preaching.

Of course he wasnt smug after he got caught and essentially admitted to buying crystal methamphetamines and having sex with a male prostitute repeatedly. But I saw interviews about homosexuality and about evolution with Haggard before he was caught, and he was PROUD PROUD PROUD as a peacock and very contemptuous and dismissive of scientists and gays.--Filll 21:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I can't speak much about those, i'd have to see some of them to figure out whether or not he's really being a smug hypocrite. But a lot of Fundamentalist preachers just give off an air of confidence in what their saying, that's not the same thing as being arrogant, it just means that we're trying to give the feeling of certainty in what we're saying. Being certain of something isn't arrogant when you're not under an obligation to go about most everything Materialistically, and therefore, relatively. Homestarmy 22:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Now, finally, which representatives specifically do you see doing nothing but hatred, do they belong to one particular organization, or is this just a pattern you notice in all Christians?

This is a very complicated question, because fundamentalists have gone out of their way to claim the name Christian just for themselves and deny that many others are Christians (such as Catholics), just as you do below here. The "Christian" (and I put the word "Christian" in quotes because they are not Christian to me) people I see spreading hatred are spread among a wide range of nondenominational, evangelical, born again, fundamentalist, biblical inerrancy, baptist and pentecostal groups, among others. I could give a very long list. But for starters, let's put James Dobson, Ann Coulter, Fred Phelps, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, Ted Haggard and a few others on that list. I could go on and on and on however. Lots of people I do not see behaving like this, but they are normally people that fundamentalists would not claim as "Christians" but instead targets of their hatred.--Filll 21:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Ehhh, actually, I don't know any Fundamentalists who say that everyone who lived before the Fundamentalist movement wasn't a Christian, which is what taking the name only for ourselves would require :/. Now, individual Catholics can be Christians, and I won't deny that some people get carried away and accuse all Catholics of not being Christian, but the real issue mostly is whether or not the Church itself is Christian, not every individual member. Catholicism is probably the most complicated discussion though due to shared heritage and their long history and whatnot, all the other groups are normally far more cut and dry, like Jehovah's witnesses or the LDS. (Not Mormonism as a whole, I don't think a lot of people realize this at the moment, but Mormonism has plenty of denominations within itself with a very large disparity of beliefs.) Homestarmy 22:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Because in today's society, you'd be surprised how many people who call themselves Christian actually reveal that they hold beliefs which have nothing to do with Christianity when you quiz them a bit, the problem is that its a holdover from the Gilded age, when the church was basically faking it for awhile and people mostly only went to church because their family went to it. (That particular sort of thing is huge in the Ukranian Eastern Orthodox right now, but that's mostly unrelated to the Gilded age, similar principles though) Homestarmy 00:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I am not surprised because I know fundamentalists like to claim others are not true Christians etc. This story is as old as the hills. Remember the slaughter of the Cathars by the "Christians", etc...Just basically a symptom of hatred and people acting like Pharisees.--Filll 21:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, actually, I was thinking far more cut and dry sorts of things than the Cathars vs. Catholicism, those Way of the Master people I mentioned earlier have a television and radio show where they interview people, and most of the "Christians" they find either never really became born again, (And the people being interviewed said that explicitly, it wasn't a matter of ambiguity over what that meant mostly) were partly in some other religion, or really only considered themselves Christian because their parents took them to church as kids and they just never joined another religion or cared about it at all after they were 18 or something. I don't know about you, but ending up on the church membership list doesn't sound like a very rock solid definition of Christian to me. Homestarmy 22:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I look at people and how they act, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever. I learn what kind of people they are when I see how they act. The religious label doesnt mean much except that most people who are worried about biblical inerrancy that I have met seem to be a bit more interested in hatred than anything else. Just my observation.--Filll 04:49, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

please check your email :-)

please check your email :-) --Ling.Nut 22:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Two modest proposals

Two projects seem to me worth doing, outside the GA ambit, which would do much of what it does that is a service to the encyclopedia.

One would be similar to the original vision: a list of articles which editors like, with some simple, light mechanic, in the spirit of WP:PRO.

The other would be a proposal for close reading of articles by intelligent outsiders, as you began doing with Bach. As there, the outside reader must expect to have many of his objections discounted (I'm no musicologist, and even I see why the article is phrased as it is); but the remainder would be infinitely helpful.

Would you be interested in helping start either of these? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

While I understand many editors recent concerns with the way GA has gone, especially with the GA criteria as of late, I just today got to Christmas break, and I have some suggestions to make about the criteria that I didn't have time to defend before that I think i'd like to try before trying to start something else. Honestly though, with your second suggestion, Peer Review isn't as dead as people make it out to be nowadays, it was so alive when I used it on Jesus, that I got told off for not implementing the suggestions a reviewer made after about a week, I had no idea it was so active then that people were supposed to rectify suggestions immedietly :/. (The first time I submitted a review, I got little response, but that was many months before) Homestarmy 00:32, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I will check peer review; but my experience is that it doesn't provide the sort of close reading you provided. (Or that Ling.Nut. gave Homotopy groups of spheres. (btw, if I don't answer one of your comments, ping my page - I may have missed it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Trust me, when I didn't answer this reviewer who really gave a good bit of analysis on that peer review, he/she really let me have it :/. I suspect what happens is that, like GA nominations, articles with fairly interesting topics to the community get the most attention, because reviewers will be more familiar with the subject area. Homestarmy 00:52, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

In fact, privately, if there is Systemic Bias here, it is the spirit of "we reviewers" among GA regulars. I don't mean you, here; but do reread the argument over whether mandatory was disputed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:16, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, at first, we had a clear supermajority for the citations. But once we hit the scientific articles a little while later, that's when the real dispute started, but only because science type article editors I guess didn't like Agne's warnings. (Which were pretty charitable I thought, there were some articles he warned which had like 40 Kb of texts and maybe one reference for the whole thing, there's no way that's a good article, scientific or otherwise.) Homestarmy 05:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

hey did you see this

Did you see this:

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/presents/after.jesus/

--Ling.Nut 20:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

BTW, I made a list of the articles Agne warned. If you look at any of the artcicles, be sure to double-check that Agne warned them, and that hey are still GAs. I think I got it all right, but always double check anyhow:

User:Ling.Nut/rere

--Ling.Nut 22:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Christian theology on quizfarm

Interesting, have you considered adding it to your userpage on CKB? Arch O. La ^{Grigory Deepdelver} 22:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I have not been looking at the CKB, is that still going on? I had assumed that everyone had just quit mostly, to make a really good Wiki, there has to be a whole bunch of people, and I never saw that for the CKB :/. Homestarmy 01:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Roman Catholicism in Afghanistan

The key thing I think the article needs are 1) More detailed history 2) A bigger picture 3) Copyediting

I think that would put it on its way to FA status. Let me know what the issues are if there are any others. Thanks so much for choosing this article! Judgesurreal777 02:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Not really, I would have added it if I did.....I'll look around, let you know if I find/think of anything. Judgesurreal777 17:00, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Jews for Jesus

Well, Mnikoldz (talk · contribs) is a confirmed sock. Also see my reasoning about the protection at User talk:Crzrussian. Khoikhoi 19:41, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

No consensus

What's this pure rubbish about a no consensus on Graniteville Train Disaster? The lead was definitely not a lead, and needed work. I'm going to delist this one immediately, and then someone can plump for a GAR review of my actions if they don't like it. LuciferMorgan 21:39, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I just delisted the article based on criterion 1. b. - it was there in black and white. My apologies if you disagree with the delisting, but I disagree with the "no consensus" ruling. LuciferMorgan 21:45, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't look at me, Ling archived that one. Homestarmy 22:09, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Time Cube

>nudge< A.J.A. 20:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

GA reviewers

I'm not gone. See edit on Netflix on GA/R page on that. Also, do you or do you not have to be on the partcipant page to be a pass GAs? Shimeru seems way too lax to me, but whatever. I think we should require people to be listed to passs articles. Responding here is fine.Rlevse 21:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Intelligent Design Mathematics

Which of these do you agree with, and which do you not?
Evolution = atheism
Evolution= religion
ID=science
atheists=Humanists=naturalists
Creationism=science
evolution=Big Bang+cosmochemistry+Hertzsprung-Russell Stellar theory+abiogenesis+biological evolution+speciation
scientists=atheists
ID>creationism
Christians=biblical literalists
Catholics != Christians
scientists!= Christians
Religion=Christianity
Religious Creation accounts=Genesis
--Filll 18:35, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

None of them, though some because I think they are iffy as opposed to me holding a clear alternative view. I guess i've capitulated to the evolutionist camp without knowing it, my how these things creep up on you eh? While I have seen with my own eyes many people write specifically about how, for them, Evolutionary theory is an instrumental aspect of their justification for atheism, theistic evolution has it own article, so apparently there are enough adherants to be notable, which doesn't sound like a singular religion to me, if it even is one at all. "Evolution" does not automatically mean all of the modern synthesis, for many creationists including myself, it truthfully only refers to microevolution, which is certainly no religion. As you may be aware, many fundamentalists are skeptical of Intelligent Design advocates because they seem to do a flip-flopping comprimise dance, first almost agreeing with evolutionists, and then seeming to flip back to YEC almost, but if I undersstand it, they are generally old-earthers. And, therefore, I am one of those skeptical fundamentalists when it comes to ID. Many atheists worldwide live in locations where Humanism and naturalism historically never happened, so its a bit hard for them all to be those things. I would classify Creationism under history more than science, since science is a study using things which can be reproduced one way or another most of the time, whereas history by default isn't. While many evolutionists I have read things from do seem to enjoy tying together all the things you mention evolution equalling in order to supposedly crush religion in general, (Well, maybe not the Hertzsprung thing, i've never heard someone use that phrase before.) I don't see microevolution in that list, which makes for a very problematic definition for me indeed. My Chemistry teacher is a scientist yet certainly doesn't seem atheistic at all, so first hand experience rules me out from agreeing with the next time. I fail to see how ID is somehow greater than Creationism, when it seems far more deistic than Christian at its core no matter how many roman catholics lead the movement. Next, being a literalist is simply not enough. Anyone can read the Bible literally, but that doesn't mean you'll necessarily accept it as true. Catholicism as a whole, I suspect, is certainly getting closer to non-Christian every day from the looks of it, though it is a problematic generalization to make, because it is such a worldwide denomination that geographical boundaries often allow certain regions to have beliefs different than the Vatican's. However, while I am quite well aware of the many "THE POPE IS THE ANTICHRIST!" type websites out there, I do not subscribe to their views, and am not a Seventh Day Adventist. I'm surprised you honestly think all ID type people would think that no scientists are Christians, I see so many evolution advocates going on and on about those creationists and their mean old quote mining, in which we often pull a few quotes from some pretty Christian sounding scientists like Newton or somebody. I don't know what "Religion=Christianity" is supposed to mean so I can't agree with it, but put a "True" in front of that and you'll have it about right. (See, maybe i'm fundamentalist after all!) There's a similar problem with your last one, it needs a modifier at the beginning, otherwise it could describe every creation account of any religion, true or not. Homestarmy 19:24, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. This is the kind of feedback I like to help me with my writing. Ok here is an edited list with some comments:

Evolution = atheism

I believe that this is a ridiculous statement but it is very often used

Evolution= religion

This is often used to discredit evolution and say it is no better than creationism, that people believe it blindly and with faith like a religion. I think it is also because the Supreme Court ruled that religions can not be taught in science classrooms.

ID=science

Many people in the ID movement want to claim they are doing real science, not a religion, and thus belong in the classroom.

atheists=Humanists=naturalists

I have noticed that these are all slurs that are lobbed at atheists or people who subscribe to evolution. They sometimes throw the word "materialistic" in there too, or racist or socialist or liberal etc for good measure

Creationism=science

I notice many people want to claim creation accounts are science and belong in the science classroom.

evolution=Big Bang+cosmochemistry+Hertzsprung-Russell Stellar theory+abiogenesis+biological evolution+speciation

If you go to the Kent Hovind website, he gives these different names, but he basically lumps everything under the rubric of the evil word "evolution". Hertzsprung and Russell have a theory for where stars come from and how they age. I put microevolution as biological evolution, and macroevolution as speciation. These are only sometimes used as terms by biologists. Cosmochemistry refers to how the particles from atoms and molecules after the big bang. Abiogenesis refers to where life came from of course.

scientists=atheists

I have heard this claim many many times. Or satanists. Or Satan's minions. Or inherently evil. etc.

ID>creationism

This means that ID includes more things than a creation by God, but could include creation by superior extraterrestrials

Christians=biblical literalists

Often some people will claim if you do not believe in the bible literally (and usually interpret their version of the bible the way they want you to as well), you are not a Christian

Catholics != Christians

This I have heard over and over and over

scientists!= Christians

I have heard often that you cannot be a scientist and a Christian at the same time, or even religious (not by scientists but by fundamentalists etc).

Only True Religion=Christianity

And obviously only their narrow version of Christianity

Only True Religious Creation account=Genesis

Obvious--Filll 20:40, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Let me respond to your long post:

None of them, though some because I think they are iffy as opposed to me holding a clear alternative view.

I disagree with all of them myself

I guess i've capitulated to the evolutionist camp without knowing it, my how these things creep up on you eh?

Come to the dark side

While I have seen with my own eyes many people write specifically about how, for them, Evolutionary theory is an instrumental aspect of their justification for atheism,

I would say that is a tiny minority, just as true atheists are a teeny tiny minority, at least in the US, maybe around 1-5 percent at most. Many more agnostics of course.

theistic evolution has it own article, so apparently there are enough adherants to be notable, which doesn't sound like a singular religion to me, if it even is one at all.

According to my research and personal knowledge, there are probably 3-5 times as many people who believe in theistic evolution as believe in creationism, at least in the US. Most people who believe in evolution believe in theistic evolution in fact

"Evolution" does not automatically mean all of the modern synthesis, for many creationists including myself, it truthfully only refers to microevolution, which is certainly no religion.

To some people it is. For legal reasons or just to slur the other side and say the worst thing about them they can think of, to bait them etc.

As you may be aware, many fundamentalists are skeptical of Intelligent Design advocates because they seem to do a flip-flopping comprimise dance, first almost agreeing with evolutionists, and then seeming to flip back to YEC almost, but if I undersstand it, they are generally old-earthers.

Having read some of the literature and listened to some of them, I notice that none of them really agree. It is like counting how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. There is no data or evidence on which to base any belief, aside from the bible, and everyone interprets that differently (and then there are the other religious texts of course)

And, therefore, I am one of those skeptical fundamentalists when it comes to ID. Many atheists worldwide live in locations where Humanism and naturalism historically never happened, so its a bit hard for them all to be those things.

I agree. I never even have heard of most of it except in the nasty things that creationists and fundamentalists say about others

I would classify Creationism under history more than science, since science is a study using things which can be reproduced one way or another most of the time, whereas history by default isn't.

You are forgetting that a lot of astronomy and meteorology and seismology etc cannot be reproduced either. These are the so -called "observational sciences". Evolutionary biology is partly experimental as well, however.

While many evolutionists I have read things from do seem to enjoy tying together all the things you mention evolution equalling in order to supposedly crush religion in general, (Well, maybe not the Hertzsprung thing, i've never heard someone use that phrase before.)

I think this is just pure ignorance and a desperate attempt to slam it all in one fell swoop

I don't see microevolution in that list, which makes for a very problematic definition for me indeed.

sorry

My Chemistry teacher is a scientist yet certainly doesn't seem atheistic at all, so first hand experience rules me out from agreeing with the next time.

Exactly

I fail to see how ID is somehow greater than Creationism, when it seems far more deistic than Christian at its core no matter how many roman catholics lead the movement. Next, being a literalist is simply not enough. Anyone can read the Bible literally, but that doesn't mean you'll necessarily accept it as true.

I mean believe it is literally true and inerrant of course

Catholicism as a whole, I suspect, is certainly getting closer to non-Christian every day from the looks of it, though it is a problematic generalization to make, because it is such a worldwide denomination that geographical boundaries often allow certain regions to have beliefs different than the Vatican's. However, while I am quite well aware of the many "THE POPE IS THE ANTICHRIST!" type websites out there, I do not subscribe to their views, and am not a Seventh Day Adventist. I'm surprised you honestly think all ID type people would think that no scientists are Christians, I see so many evolution advocates going on and on about those creationists and their mean old quote mining, in which we often pull a few quotes from some pretty Christian sounding scientists like Newton or somebody.

Well Not all creationists/Fundamentalists/intelligent design proponents will agree with all of these, for sure. They disagree with each other like crazy. I do not claim they all agree by any means.

I don't know what "Religion=Christianity" is supposed to mean so I can't agree with it, but put a "True" in front of that and you'll have it about right. (See, maybe i'm fundamentalist after all!) There's a similar problem with your last one, it needs a modifier at the beginning, otherwise it could describe every creation account of any religion, true or not. Homestarmy 19:24, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

THere you go...so what do you think?--Filll 20:51, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Dark side

Well....

Come to the dark side

I decided a long time ago that neither the light nor the dark were inherintly good or evil, but rather, that it is inside the darkness or inside the light at any given time that has the capacity to be either good or evil. Evil lurks in the darkened halls of man-made philosophy just as it lurked in the shadows of yesteryear, but it was never the shadows that were evil. Likewise, Satan himself is said to be able to appear as an angel of light, so it would seem that the light itself is not necessarily what is good, but what is inside the light. Plus, if you read the later Star Wars books, the new Jedi council eventually rejects the distinction of light and dark sides of the force, when they felt compelled to bust out some force lighting or something because the main enemy, the Yhuzzan Vong, were immune to the force mostly and were highly annoying for just light side Jedi to beat. I say they should of just busted out the biological toxin thing right from the get go, but meh....

I would say that is a tiny minority, just as true atheists are a teeny tiny minority, at least in the US, maybe around 1-5 percent at most. Many more agnostics of course.

While probably true for the main population, most internet communities i've seen have a highly disproportionate amount of atheist and/or agnostic representation, and although i'm not saying that all atheists, agnostics, or whomever use Evolution to justify their Atheism, i'm simply stating that I have seen it done many times. (Of course, I wouldn't call their attempts successfull...)

Part of the problem here is that many fundamentalists want to brand others as atheists when they are not even close to atheists. It is what I was trying to get across with my "math" above. Now orangemarlin and myself are not atheists. But I am sure many fundamentalists would call us atheists. And so it gets confusing. Statistically they are a tiny group. Even in science they are about half at most, and I bet even less since I think the survey I saw lumped agnostics in with atheists, and agnostics are far far more numerous than atheists.--Filll 21:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

So then what "math" do fundamentalists who don't assume all evolutionists are atheists use? Are we at least at pre-algebra yet? Homestarmy 14:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

According to my research and personal knowledge, there are probably 3-5 times as many people who believe in theistic evolution as believe in creationism, at least in the US. Most people who believe in evolution believe in theistic evolution in fact.

Well, I wish more of them would show up more often on the internet, it always seems like only the Christians and Atheists ever have the compulsion to prove something :/.

I am not an Atheist. And here I am. Orangemarlin is not an atheist. But here he is...--Filll 21:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

If I understand how this works, most people who believe evolutionary theory to be the most bestest explanatory model of life ever are generally on the presumption that it has already been "proven" in a manner of speaking. What are you trying to prove then? :/ Homestarmy 14:12, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

To some people it is. For legal reasons or just to slur the other side and say the worst thing about them they can think of, to bait them etc.

Well, I wasn't planning on becoming a lawyer, I don't know if Roanoake collage even has a law school :/. But i'm just holding that Evolution is only limited to microevolution, even if i'm taking a slightly more vauge definition that most creationist type websites because you folks keep coming up with more stuff against everything we say every day, (We're just slightly outnumbered, don't have any respected universities anywhere in the nation, outnumbered in the scientific community by a good bit, that sort of thing.) for my own benefit mostly at the moment.

I have seen some creationists that claim that they have no problem with macroevolution either. And most people do not know what evolution is; in a survey fewer than half the people could pick the definition of evolution out of a list. So it is all pretty confused. But you are right, biblical fundamentalists are outnumbered. They are about 10% of the US, depending on how you count. --Filll 21:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

It is a difficult theory/model/what-have-you to keep up with, the evolutionary synthesis has a rather annoying habit of radically changing something fundamental every couple of years or so I notice :/. But its not just "Biblical fundamentalists" that are outnumbered, i'm talking just creation scientists/apologists alone vs. all of academia who hold to evolutionary theory, that's probably an even worse number than just 10 percent. Homestarmy 14:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Having read some of the literature and listened to some of them, I notice that none of them really agree. It is like counting how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. There is no data or evidence on which to base any belief, aside from the bible, and everyone interprets that differently (and then there are the other religious texts of course).

Well, its not the lack of evidence i'm concerned about, its that they just seem so much like their willing to comprimise on one thing and be erratic on other things, which as you might imagine, would be bad for a Fundamentalist :D

I have seen many fundamentalists glad to ignore parts of the bible they want to ignore, or interpret those parts in ways that suit them. So...--Filll 21:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

That's just it, I don't think many IDer's are even fundamentalists at all, they don't seem to act like it very much. The Discovery Institute who, if I understand this right, basically created ID doesn't seem that fundamentalist to me, just because they have that wedge thing that looks insidious to some people doesn't make them fundamentalist.... but anyway, if you see people all the time who ignore parts of the Bible without even trying to make it all work together, why do you let them get away with labelling themselves as fundamentalist? Homestarmy 14:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

You are forgetting that a lot of astronomy and meteorology and seismology etc cannot be reproduced either. These are the so -called "observational sciences". Evolutionary biology is partly experimental as well, however.

They can, however, still be observed at the moment in some ways, whereas I don't think any of us were around for the act of creation. So it just seems more like history to me than science, other kinds of historical things don't need to be science to be considered accurate by most academic type from what i've seen, so I just don't see why we need it to necessarily be recognized as scientific per se. Some of the evidence may be scientific, some....might not, (Let's just say I come across some Creationist arguments which are, erm, a bit out of date unfortunently, the modern synthesis changes way too fast man, not everyone can keep up :/.) but it just seems to me Creationism itself is more like history than science.

But you can observe evolution at the moment. Both micro and macro evolution have been observed "at the moment". Many times. And documented over and over. And no real history that ignores science these days is respectable. After all, what about the history of the Great Flood? Pseudohistory at best. Many creationists are using arguments from 50 or 100 or 150 years ago. It is just part for the course..--Filll 21:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I was under the impression macroevolution, by default, wasn't really much of a "this moment" occasion, isn't it supposed to take awhile or something? Besides, every show i've seen with the flood geology sort of thing seems far more into trying to use science to prove it than history, you have to admit, if something came and flooded the whole planet, physical evidence that would be acceptable in modern academia probably wouldn't be easy to come by. Homestarmy 14:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I mean believe it is literally true and inerrant of course

Oh. Well, now you have to get into the versions debate, because what happens if we're talking about a Jehovah's Witness creationist, (If they exist, i'm not actually certain....) who uses the New World Translation, of which there is an abundance of evidence to demonstrate that the methods used in its creation were hardly honest? Homestarmy 21:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that the fighting over versions is why we have several thousand sects of Christianity. And who knows which is best? And yes, people have died because they followed a different version. Lots of them.--Filll 21:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I seriously doubt its that simple, these versions aren't normally that different, every single incidence of what you describe that I know of in history had very little to do with what version of the Bible people were reading, but what their beliefs were, and you don't need different versions of the Bible just to hold differing beliefs. It's just that particular versions happened to follow people around who already held to a particular different belief, so the particular version in question may of been tied to the belief when in reality the belief didn't necessarily arise from the version at hand in the first place. Homestarmy 14:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Review Please

I liked the way that you reviewed the Scotch College, Perth article, and i would like you to review my article - aquinas college, perth. Thanks Smbarnzy 12:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

For GA status? Unless i'm looking at the wrong talk page it doesn't appear to be a nominee.... Homestarmy 22:26, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Moses GA

Noticed you put this article on hold back in early December. Just wanted to remind you to take a look at it, in case you'd forgotten. Shimeru 09:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I had hoped somebody else would of done something with it, it just seems so close I can't decide whether it is or is not a GA :/. Nothing was changed with the historography section or trivia I think, I just don't know how to handle it.... Homestarmy 17:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I just took a look at this...the lead doesn't summarize the article--for example, it says nothing about sections 2-6, the refs are not in a consistent format, and several large paras are uncited. Just my 2 cents. Rlevse 17:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I was concerned that the lead expansion wasn't big enough too, but I never really got specific about what precisely the lead should say, i'm concerned that if I fail it somebody will get angry at me for not more clearly defining what the lead should be like. Homestarmy 17:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Jesus

Thanks for editing the Jesus article.

I recently found that the Jesus article on Wikipedia is the first item that comes up when you search for "Jesus" on the world’s most widely used search engine, Google.

Please edit the Jesus article to make it an accurate and excellent representation of Him.

The Jesus article may be a person’s first impression of Jesus. It would be nice if their first impression was from a Christian or the Bible, but for so many in these new days it probably comes from the Internet. Watch the Jesus page to keep it focused on Him. Thanks a lot.

Also, watch out to follow Wikipedia's Policies and guidelines. It is especially hard for the Three-revert rule and the Neutral point of view policy to be followed because of the nature of the article, but please follow these policies along with citing sources so that the article does not get locked from editing and can't be improved further. Thanks again. Scifiintel 18:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Continuing discussion

I didn't want to clog up [User:Filll]'s discussion page with our stuff. So let me continue:

• Jewish stuff. There are anti-semetic nuts out there, and I choose to believe that they are a distinct minority in this country. But as I tell my children and my step-children, prior to Kristallnacht, most Jews in Germany just ignored what was happening. We were watching the movie Joyeux Noel a few nights ago (not as a Christmas celebration, mind you), and I had to stop the movie to explain how the Germans were commanded by a Jewish Lieutenant. But I digress. Hatred of Jews ends up with us usually being killed or exiled.
• Which leads me to White Trash. I don't consider it a racist or inoffensive statement, but you may. It describes a group of Americans who are uneducated. However, if we are describing the intense poverty amongst a certain class of whites, then I wouldn't use White Trash...I'd use something like very poor. And please don't argue that there are people who can't get a decent education. That's a lack of trying on their part, not a lack of my being sympathetic.
• Which leads me to Atheism. Despite your comments (and jokes between us), I am not an atheist. Do I believe in your version of the Bible? No. Do I believe anything in the Bible? As a moral code, maybe, but I'm not a big fan of smiting someone for some offense. Do I think Noah's Ark existed? No way. Do I think Jesus existed? Don't get me started. Do I believe in your god? Nope. Do I believe in a G_d? Yes. Do I think science and G_d are mutually exclusive? No, one most certainly exists with the other. When I cure someone of a disease, it is not a miracle, it is medical science at its best. When I fail to do so, it has nothing to do with religion or prayer or god, it has everything to do with my skills, technology, and timing. My skills come from my own training and education. So that's my opinion on everything. We differ less than you think. But I will not countenance you or anyone making me, my children, or anyone else believe what you believe. That's why I'm adamant about keeping religion with religion and science as science, and not try to make religion a science. Sorry for the rant. Orangemarlin 19:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I would second this. The part of the Christian creationist movement that is so offensive, along with the Muslim creationist movement and the Hindu creationist movements, is their demands to push their beliefs on everyone else. Sometimes the alternative is death. That is the problem. No one is saying your beliefs are bad etc. But to force them on others, that is VERY bad. And it has been bad throughout history.--Filll 20:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes it is good to step back to get a little perspective. That is why I wrote the Hindu creationism article. Read it. What do you think of them? Now try to imagine what your faith and movement looks like to outsiders. See? --Filll 20:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it took me awhile, but here I am, and i've got plenty to say heh. The problem I have with White Trash is in the context I generally here it in life, its generally a racist remark used against white people solely to denigrate them and them alone. I'm aware that historically it was used to refer to poor white people out in the "boondocks" so to speak at first due to the extreme poverty, but that was back when almost every black person in America was a slave, and in today's society, "White Trash" is making a racial distinction where none needs to me made in my opinion, having someone without an education is not a matter of race, its a matter of circumstance. Since the usage of "White Trash" here seems to imply that only "uneducated" white people are the problem as opposed to every "uneducated" person, it appears racist to me. If I was Asian in descent, would you be so quick to condemn me for wanting to stand up for what I believe and trying to convince others that it was true? I mean I certainly wouldn't be part of the "White Trash" community you speak of. Now, on smiting people for some offense, the smiting ultimatly will from God, whom the Bible proposes is a being of infinite justice. I cannot think of any better being who would be equipped to judiciously punish people. But Orange, surely you realize Evangelical type Christians are not all the same, I can think of no Biblical reason whatsoever to justify that when you personally cure someone of a disease, it was God Himself personally doing it instead, and i'm certain there are other Christians somewhat similar to me who would find an equally hard time finding such justification. But no need to apologize for the rant, I mean, my English teachers always keep complaining that everything I write mostly is a rant, and im telling ya, those papers aren't that bad, they have structure and everything. So I think "ranting" in the apparently professional sense of the word is certainly nothing bad.

I don't practice medicine like I used to, but several years ago, I'd say 20% of my patients or close family members would say something about G_d helping me in some way. Since I have no bedside manner (contain your surprise), I would reply with any number of comments, one of my favorites is "well I hope your god pays my bill, because I did all of the work." Probably was a bit argumentative on my part. Anyways, I actually don't know much about Evangelical Christians because there aren't a lot around my hometown of Santa Barbara, CA. We're all decadent heathens--maybe we are all well-off, secure, and happy to have perfect weather 12 months a year, etc. etc., so we tend to ignore religion. So basically, all I know about your religion are some people who sit in the local Starbucks reading the bible together, the LDS missionaries who come to my door probably because of the University of Utah sticker on my car, and the crazy nutjob who insisted on trying to engage me in a discussion of why I was going to Hell as a Jew when I was sitting next to him on a very long flight from LAX to JFK a few years ago. As for the White Trash comment, I'm white, I went to college, two graduate schools and medical school (and no, I'm not a prototypical wealthy upper middle class Jew, I come from poor English/Welsh stock), I work my butt off, and I have no tolerance of anti-educated people (I'll set aside the excuse-ridden laziness of not bettering oneself). Anyways, to prevent further argument, and because this is sounding like an excuse-riddled rant, I won't use the terminology again. But if you tell me that you'll drive up in your Ford 150 pickup, beer cans in the back, a shotgun rack in the window (not shotguns would be allowed here in California), and you are chewing tobacco, it's going to take a great amount of self control to not laugh and say it. But I'll be a grown up. Orangemarlin 22:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I have a question about that person on the plane, did they by any chance start by asking "Would you consider yourself to be a good person?" or something like that? But with Ford 150 guys, I gotta say, tobacco isn't as cheap as it used to be, and its gotta take plenty of concentration to drive a truck, chew tobacco, and be drunk on beer at the same time :D. Homestarmy 14:27, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, Chewing tobacco is very bad for you. Mouth cancer and the such. Besides it's disgusting. I drive a truck  :) Don't drink beer however. No the guy next to me on the plane asked if I believed in Jesus. I answered, not really, he forgot to trim the hedges last week. Went downhill quickly. But it was better than sitting next to the LDS Quorum of 70 member who started to get ticked off when I was reading Krakauer's book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. I almost ordered a beer and chewing tobacco right then and there. Orangemarlin 22:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

....Well, its a very expensive kind of cancer, yea, its like an elite product! That...kills people...ahem, anyway, it seems a bit odd to me that LDS folks would get angry about that kind of thing, most reports i've heard about LDS behavior toward's non-Mormons generally takes the form of pouring on as much love as possible to influence you to join them :/. Homestarmy 01:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Now, Filll, I think a little distinction needs to be layed out here. In your Hindu Creationism article the primary proponents are Hindu Nationalists. Historically, India has not exactly been the most peaceful of places to live or be political in, and this history of India has predisposed their nationalist movement to be highly violant and intimidating apparently. Christian Creationism, on the other hand, is not so tied up in a single region of the world, while it is admittedly heavily Americanized and of course many Creationist type ministries are conservative politically and like looking patriotic, I don't think you'd find large caches of weaponry for some Christian Nationalist movement in the states like you're probably going to find over there in India. Sadly, I sometimes think this is why whenever Christians try to do what the Hindu's in your California example did to the school system, we don't get listening to as much as Muslims or Hindu's might be, because we aren't predisposed to murderously and violently threatening people who get in our way as much. Yes, we'll boycott things and hold protests, but they don't take the form of people just chanting "Jesus Akbar!" if you know what I mean. Force through violence isn't the objective, its more of a democratic kind of pressure, people claim its just playing with politics, but we're citizens of this country too and sometimes when we outnumber people in a certain area democracy should, theoretically, take precedence quite a bit. However, Muslims and Hindu's pretty much never come close to outnumbering anyone in this country, yet as you've pointed out they get listened to quite a bit whenever subjects like this come up, suspiiiiciouuuus.....But anyway, if people honestly think the Radical Hindu Nationalist movements of India are exibitive of Fundamentalist Christian behavior, i'm afraid that's a problem of massively blowing up the "threat" of Christianity than a problem with Christians riding through the streets toting machine guns and threatening to drive-by-shoot anyone who advocates Evolutionary theory. (Since, of course, that doesn't happen.) Homestarmy 20:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

• I am afraid things are more ambiguous. There are lots of Christian militia wanting to blow up abortion clinics etc and stockpiling weapons. And there were death threats against Judge Jones after the Dover decision. And the KKK uses the bible to justify themselves. As the slave masters used to as well. --Filll 21:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Which Militia's? And unlike either Hindu or Muslim type organizations, the vast majority of Christian type organizations would certainly condemn such attacks as compleatly unnaccetable from a Biblical standpoint, which they are. And remember, our country has several hundred million people. I don't think just a small little cluster of them sending death threats is really representative of Christianity as a whole, which is bigger than our country anyway. Also, have you ever tried to examine whether or not the KKK and the slave masters actually justify all of their behavior logically using the Bible? Because anybody these days can make themselves sound like a member of any religion they want to by saying things alone. Homestarmy 21:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

• I definitely do not claim they speak for all Christians, just as the Hindu and Muslim extremists do not speak for all Hindus and Muslims. However, by the same token, all creationists and fundamentalists and biblolaters and believers in bible inerrancy and bible literalism do not speak for all Christians either. They want to, they want to appropriate the name for themselves and declare Catholics nonChristian and Presbyterians nonChristian etc. And they do not speak for me either. So that is the source of the problem in all these situations. A small obnoxious aggressive group wants to foist its views on everyone else. --Filll 21:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

So then, although I believe that the only way to earn salvation is through faith in Christ and that all other religions and/or belief systems are wrong just as a fundamentalist would believe, and am a Creationist, Biblical inerrantist, (Is that even a word?) considering that I do not see why every last Catholic would not necessarily be Christian, what precisely am I? Homestarmy 14:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

So explain to me, where do I stand in your hierarchy of morality. I served my country. I help people live longer and healthier. I give to charities. I help the poor. Catholics believe that the pathway to heaven requires loving G_d and doing good works. What if I told you that I do both, not out of obligation but out of desire? Not that I believe in Jesus or in your religion, but do you really think if Jesus were here that he would care all about the rules and regulations? Do you think he cares all that much about Evolution? What if he came down here and said to all of us, you know G_d guided man's hand in writing the bible, but G_d's seven days is kind of like your 7 billion years? You'll say that I can't know what G_d means, but then how can you? Anyways, aside from some minor issues here and there, you may be shocked to believe that we may both see the world in the same way. It's a matter of interpretation. Orangemarlin 22:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe that if Jesus was here, he would be disgusted with what he saw going on in the world and in most churches. And the churches he would be most upset at would probably be those extremists at the boundaries; evangelical Christians, Lubbuvatichers, Wahabi Muslims, etc. Just my opinion.--Filll 00:21, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Well Orange, the "hierarchy of morality" in fundamentalist type Christianity is relatively simple, all humans (except Jesus of course) are evil when compared to a standard of infinite goodness, like God. From what i've learned, its very difficult for people to comphrehend why we think this unless I, well, at least partially evangelize to you :). (Trust me, i've seen this before, when people just state that everyone is evil and offer them no explanation or just some lousy one that's not connected to the message of at least God's justice anyway, things tend to get....messy.) Homestarmy 01:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

In principle, yes homestarmy, although I have seen this not work like that at all in practice. Lots of US fundamentalists are only too glad to engage in assorted hate speach of a wide variety.--Filll 04:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

That's the thing, not many people in America, as far as I can tell, really know how to evangelize Biblically. I mean, the Bible gives plenty of clues, but you gotta read things a bit closely to get it on your own I think. Most of the time you'll get people who are on either extreme, either friendly towareds the culture or unfriendly. Friendly would typically be your standard encounter with any Christian if you initiate the conversation, whereas your bound to eventually hear something about the so-called hole in your heart that Jesus supposedly came to fill, and probably alot about self-fulfilment and happiness and whatnot, generally without concentrating at all about sin, hell, God's perfection and thus infinite standard of justice, that kind of thing. It's probably a big reason why the latest polls about church evangelism success is only like a 5 percent rate of people who actually stay active in the church after making a "decision", unlike in the Bible, people like this don't really ever warn people about the "wrath to come" as the Bible puts it, and of course, then there's not very much conviction about being a Christian, or believing in God, or really much else, because after all, as far as the person who made a "Decision" is concerned, the "man upstairs" isn't planning on really being mean to anyone for any reason.

Then, of course, you have the other extreme, where people aren't very friendly towards the culture. And, of course, by not friendly, I mean pure hell-fire preaching. It's typically something like Jonathan Edwards type preaching, except even his (in my opinion) sparse mention of actually being saved through faith in Jesus Christ is lost in the translation. So you have people screaming about Hell, how much God will punish those who have sinned in His eyes, typically little to no justification about why God first of all must be infinitly just and second of all why this justice must be applied to mankind in the form of punishment in Hell. Then, typically, there's pretty much no mention at all of how to actually escape this punishment, there might be a little mentioning of Christ's name a tiny bit, but overall, there's pretty much no gospel presentation. This, as you might imagine, makes people rather angry at the speaker, and then generally about Christianity too if that becomes their impression of it, and rightfully so. I mean, who wants to be shouted at about how much God hates them, and then not be told why God hates them, or why God will send them to Hell, or even how to avoid that fate. This never happened in the Bible, for a small example, Jesus's encounter with the women at the well is sort of an introduction about how you can introduce the topic of people's sins, and then present the gospel. Although it was typically only the Gospel being preached in the NT, this was mostly in Israel or at least with a Jewish audience, so of course they'd already be familiar with God's standard of justice anyway. Preachers like Charles Spurgeon or George Whitfield are the kind that you'd hope would be more out on the force, they both presented the law of God, and of course the justifications for God having to be a being of justice, and then the gospel. It's probably why they were so famous actually, Whitfield in particular shows up in alot of just basic history books, sometimes along with Finny or something like that.Homestarmy 01:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

We probably dont have a word for you. You have some fundamentalist and creationist beliefs, but you are far more reasonable than most it would seem.--Filll 15:17, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Aww, that reasonableness gets me again, off to the UU training camps for me... :D Homestarmy 01:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh those evil UU types!! Wash your mouth out with soap for even saying their name!!--Filll 04:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't want you to think that, you know, maybe I'd say something nice about you at the next Atheist Society Meeting held on Darwin's Birthday, but I am a big fan of intelligence and intelligent discourse. You probably think I'm damned to Hell, and I think you're a Fundamentalist, but I could probably sit down with a glass of wine (you do drink??) and discuss intelligent things. We won't figure out the "truth" but we might learn a bit. But if you have to deny knowing me and Filll, because you'll be thrown out of the Christian Fundamentalist and Apple Pie Baking Society, we'll say some mean things about you publicly. Just understand that I'm not an Atheist, but I don't think we're fundamentally evil Although knowing what you just wrote, I now know when I called a certain recently banned user (who sits on your side of the fence, and you ought to have kicked him out) evil, I was far closer to the your belief that I ever knew ;) I still wonder if Jesus really did exist and really does return, if he'd be just ticked off at all of us for any number of reasons. Anyways, I still like the Catholic ideal of loving your G_d and doing good works. Almost would be acceptable to me, except the Pope is German, and you know that cultural memory thing.  :) Orangemarlin 06:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry, i'm sure the Atheist Society has big plans anyway for our children and pets that taking the time to discuss me might hamper. But yes, I am of the opinion that anyone who isn't born again is heading to Hell, but once again, I can't expect you to see that as reasonable unless I basically evangelize to you :D. I'm sort of not the drinking person, I prefer a nice glass of whole milk, I don't understand why people ever stop drinking it if they've started, its quite delicious....(and maybe filled with hormones, but eh, most everyone dies eventually anyway). But remember, as a fundamentalist, i'm quite convinced I already know the truth, it comes with the religion heh. But don't worry about the Apple Pie baking society, my mom has this great Apple Pie recipe, they can't afford to kick me out! (No way are we losing to those Buddhists around the corner again, we'll have that pie baking trophy back soon, you'll see! :D ) But yes, i've seen situations like that too where some really popular skeptic makes some recording or something about how "evil" Christian Fundamentalists are and I just end up silently laughing because their right, we are evil, that's quite a fundamental doctrine of, well, fundamentalism. See, we'll have you singing hyms in the church before you know it, and I haven't even gone through the law yet! It's funny you end with the Catholic thing though, alot of Catholic apologists types i've seen in the states seem to realize that works righteousness really does contradict the Bible at least by the letter, and they end up trying to deny it or obscuring it with some church tradition or something. In the states, in my experience and it seems the experience of other people i've read about, Catholic authorities often seem more protestant than Catholic in their thinking, (And a Catholic friend I have seems far more mainstream protestant than anything, and he isn't lapsed or anything I think) I guess their too far away from the Vatican or something..... Homestarmy 19:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Mediation request notification

A request for mediation has been filed with the Mediation Committee that lists you as a party. The Mediation Committee requires that all parties listed in a mediation must be notified of the mediation. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Jews for Jesus 2, and indicate whether you agree or refuse to mediate. If you are unfamiliar with mediation, please refer to Wikipedia:Mediation. There are only seven days for everyone to agree, so please check as soon as possible.

I keep reading this article, and although I can't even explain to you how appalled I am by this group, why all the arguing? I'm a very biased bystander, and it seems like a reasonable article. No one calls them Nazis (I am not a fan of using that label anyways, given that a Nazi is pretty way down the evolutionary scale of humans--couldn't resist, sorry--but these people are anti-semetic). Do you think you could give me a blow by blow of why this is so contentious? I've read the discussion, and you seem to be one of the voices of reason, but I could be confused.Orangemarlin 22:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

It's actually very complicated and we've been going at this for months, do you want the short version or the long version? Homestarmy 22:17, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

How about a short version, and I get to ask some follow up questions?Orangemarlin 22:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, basically, I just ran across this article one day, (I don't remember how) and it was in an odd kind of shape and pretty limited, so I put it on my watchlist and responded to some random people on the article talk page for a bit. To summarize, a few months or so later, for no particular reason I can tell, a whole bunch of these random new accounts or anons kept popping up and drastically editing the page in various ways, which got Humus and several other editors quite annoyed it seems. That got people interested in improving the article, I'm pretty sure even I threw in a few good referenced things here and again until the article basically got to a similar state to what you see today. (And, really, I don't think its half bad) Then we got some more dedicated editors who seem to of taken trying to edit JfJ in a far less Judaism-oriented manner as a personal mission almost, and the problem was whenever they tried to remove things related to the opinion of notable folks concerning Judaism, edit wars almost always happened. There were a ton of them, I generally stayed out of it, (well, except for a few times, I couldn't resist jumping in one or twice, this has been going on for many months now :) ) but there was so much arguing on the talk page that things got really ugly really quickly. There were some accusations of "Eliminating Jews" which wern't very nice, and I was primarily concerned with the Christianity template, which as far as I can tell from the stated motivations of several editors, (Mostly Humus) it is being used to more or less "Clear up any misconceptions the reader may hold that Jews for Jesus might actually be Jewish", which seems hardly appropriate and, as I refined my argument more, increasingly counter-productive. Although I primarily care about the template because it seems like it could lead to bad things, and maybe learning something about Jews for Jesus that makes me choose one side or the other. (Honestly, I don't know if I want to support these guys or not, I just can't get the kind of information on them that I can see from, say, The Way of the Master, and you almost never know what these kind of people are really up to until you see and hear them personally, you know?)

The main topics of contention have concerned the prominence of the incompatability with Judaism thing, the writing of the intro with all the references, the humungous amount of critical opinion, and for me with issue that got dropped, even getting a chance to spell out Jews for Jesus's offical response to much of the criticism in plain english. (It's the last reference in the JfJ response section, the way it was going, its pretty good that I was able to find a way to write the sentence so that people wouldn't take it all out of the article period :/.) I mean, if you read some of their responses, its a lot more detailed than what's there right now, but meh. Whenever people try to change the article too boldly, they tend to get mass-reverted, and while i've never been too much for boldness on this topic, I can certainly see why other people would tend to get annoyed when occasionally they try to change something in a good faith manner, Humus often just uses the rollback function, (Which, if I understand administrator policy, is supposed to only be used for vandalism related things.) or Humus and several other people just pile on revert so that nothing opposed to Jews for Jesus gets removed or shortened much. Then, of course, there's all the fun on the talk page, where the determination of some editors, (User:ParadoxTom and User:Justforasecond come to mind), seems to of made many of the anti-JfJ type editors really suspicious of anyone who wants there to be less or blunted criticism in some manner, and quite frankly, considering all the ugly mass reversions that were going on there for awhile by anon's and the like, I can understand their suspicion. Homestarmy 23:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I've got to ask one thing. What does it matter if it's incompatible with Judaism? I would say not. And as a Jew, I've met these people, and I would hope that Christians wouldn't accept them. Orangemarlin 00:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It apparently matters quite a lot to plenty of editors, as they certainly seem to get riled up easily whenever somebody tries to change the wording too much :/. We're also on the second Mediation request on the article, we just need User:Jayjg to accept again, the first one stalled out because the Mediation bot wasn't running and the whole system was basically down, and User:ParadoxTom filed an ArbCom request, but unfortunently, it seems that might of been what caused someone to notice he had been blocked again, and he was indeffed, (if that's even a word heh.) though if you ask me, if this keeps going on much longer, I think the probability of the case being accepted if submitted again is just getting higher. But on another note, you say you've met these people, can you tell me what sort of things they tried to say and do? I really do want to learn about these people on a more down to earth level, but when I went through like 20 pages of google results spammed with mostly Jewish-written attack sites, (There was even one that said all Christian Fundamentalists want the rapture to come so they can watch 1/3 of all Jews be killed in the tribulation, that sort of got my attention....) I sort of realized finding first hand information that's relatively neutral wouldn't be easy, and if you don't mind, i'd like to hear about what you experienced :). Homestarmy 00:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

And I thought the Evolution article was bad.  ;) From a Jewish perspective, there is a cultural memory that you cannot even imagine. Every Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, wedding, anything has reference to the Shoah. My ex-wife's family was devestated by pogroms and the Holocaust. Her family wouldn't trust a Christian under any circumstance. It is scary to me to read about these people. We don't know if they're the next Nazis or just some crazy group. But, that being said, and staying with the article, this is not Judaism from a cultural standpoint. From a Jewish faith standpoint, I'm not as knowledgeable as you appear to be on this matter of Messianic Jews. I know that none of my Jewish friends would consider that group Jewish, just Christians of another name. (More Orthodox of my friends and family lump all C's, their code for Christians, as one in the same). Anyways, the article to me is pretty good and balanced. Obnoxious reading, but I read the Holocaust article and get really ill. Orangemarlin 06:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Yea, i've watched the Evolution talk page quite a bit for awhile, (Shortly after I joined Wikipedia, as many creationists do, I took a stab at trying to undermine Evolutionary theory of course, but it seems the U.S. education system convienently forgot to tell me about how the first law of thermodynamics only applies to a closed system, but I was asking things in question format anyway, so I learned something without making people angry I think) it is a highly complicated theory which has a bad habit of being hard to pin down :/. (Even when other Creationists have come on the page, i've seen some responses to them contradict each other sometimes) but I don't think there's ever been any real cases for mediation or ArbCom about the Evolution article. One thing I seem to be getting from the JfJ stuff is that, as you say, the cultural setting in Jewish culture seems very deep, and apparently doesn't like being challenged much. I don't know why JfJ's particular challenge seems to evoke memories of the Holocaust in people though, its not just you, several archives ago this one person wouldn't stop repeating how Jews for Jesus is "Eliminating Jews", and then turning around and saying that I was being offensive for thinking that that comment was relating to the holocaust at least by word choice. Homestarmy 14:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The rapture and tribulation etc is great, but it is not really based on anything but the feverish nightmare of some girl less than 200 years ago who was sick in bed with the flu, as I understand. But...people get so revved up about nothing. And if it gives them another chance to attack their neighbors who believe something slightly different than them, they just jump on it. It is sick really.--Filll 00:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, these JfJ folks don't just believe something slightly different, if there's one thing i've learned about the Judaism of today from all this, is that no Jewish authority really puts up with anyone who claims to be Jewish and believes Jesus to be the Messiah. (It's not even Messianic Judaism we're talking here, even the Messianic Jewish sites i've seen that comment on JfJ don't like JfJ either, their beliefs are too different for them too heh.) However, I think a lot of these organizations aren't understanding that JfJ's definition is first ethnic, then it gets complicated religiously, even I was confused for awhile, I thought JfJ meant both Christian and Jewish religiously heh. Homestarmy 00:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm interesting. I did not know that. I thought the Messianic Jews were the same as the JfJ. I have met a few of the latter but none of the former as far as I know.--Filll 00:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The citation should actually be in the article somewhere I think, what happens is that Messianic Judaism is more into obeying the laws of the Torah in several ways than Christianity normally is. Whereas typically, even with something like Seventh Day Adventism, almost all denominations will acknowladge that we are no longer under "the curse of the law" and that we are freed from having to follow the terms of the old covenant so to speak, Messianic Judaism seems relatively separated, they seem to combine both the NT and Torah in a way that they follow the laws of both unless the NT specifically replaces some of them somewhere. So, for instance, they follow all of the Old Testament holidays mostly. Whereas if you look at JfJ's beliefs, take out the special evangelism to Jews and you've got a fairly typical looking protestant evangelical organization. Homestarmy 01:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I just learned something. I always consider the JfJ types to be Christians, and not even ethnically Jewish (even if they drop their pants and they're circumcised). A much more fascinating group are the Crypto Jews of the American southwest. Now there's something that we could discuss that has a whole bunch of historical, sociological and religious data. I don't think it's very controversial, but one can always be surprised by these things. Orangemarlin 06:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Shaw and Crompton

Thank you for your GA passing of Shaw and Crompton - it has been hard work, but well worth it, it seems! I'll try to make the ammendments you recommended to improve the article further. Thanks again, Jhamez84 16:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Request for Mediation

A Request for Mediation to which you are a party has been accepted. You can find more information on the mediation subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Jews for Jesus 2. For the Mediation Committee, Essjay (Talk) This message delivered by MediationBot, an automated bot account operated by the Mediation Committee to open new mediation cases. If you have questions about this bot, please contact the Mediation Committee directly.

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RfM/Jesus for Jews 2

Your case for Mediation from the Mediation Committee has been accepted. Your re-agreement is required at the case page under Request for Mediation; prompt action on your behalf would be appreciated in order to commence the mediation as soon as possible.

If you have any questions about my contributions, personal mediation style or otherwise, please contact me at my talk page, or email me at anthony (dot) cfc (at) gmail (dot) com - all email communication is private unless stated otherwise.

Cheers and regards,
Anthonycfc ^{[T • C]} 03:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I can't believe you believe in a God

Why do you do so? Are you a credophile? --Taraborn 23:55, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, that article is a redlink and i've never heard of the term I think, and the current reasons I have for believing in God are numerous. While at first I did, admittedly, take it for a given because nobody tried to convince me otherwise, now that i'm a Christian, I know that God exists through a combination of personal experience and various intellectual type reasons. What sort of "why" do you want an answer to? Homestarmy 23:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for reviewing Hamersley - you've brought up some good points which we can address. And your talk page is far more interesting than mine! Mine is chatter and random frog discussions at the moment. Orderinchaos78 15:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Its ok I dont think he understands the underside of the whole adventure, maybe I need to break it to him gently... ( I speak for myself of course - not him) SatuSuro 01:02, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Liverpool_F.C.

This is still on the GA/R but with improvement now has 4 keep votes, but ChrisMari delisted it on its talk page on 2 Jan. What to do? Pls repsond on GA/R page.Rlevse 14:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)...Same deal with Katie Melua. People are delisted as soon as they put them on the GA/R page.????Rlevse 14:17, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Since the real discussion seemed to be on the article talk page, I just responded there. Homestarmy 14:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for Mediation/Jews for Jesus 2

The Request for Mediation, WP:RfM/Jews for Jesus 2, has been accepted and mediation is now open. You are invited to participate in accordance with the mediator's instructions at the case talk page. For the Mediation Committee, Anthonycfc [T • C]

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Rough draft of article on creationist organization

Please look at it and give me your comments: User talk:Filll/AllAboutGod--Filll 03:03, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't seem like a half bad stub to me, are you concerned about notability or something? Homestarmy 03:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course. Notability, NPOV, grammar, etc. --Filll 04:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Here it is as a real article: All About God Ministries--Filll 15:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Interesting coincidence

Hrm, one of those interesting things of Wikipedia, I guess. I'd never happened across your userpage before, and had no idea I was working with one of those damnable fundamentalists. (This is meant quite tongue-in-cheek, of course, so please don't take offense. :) ) I'm used to it enough being called a hellbound atheist, so it's interesting for me to see that I'm working with a very religious person in one case, and a quite real-life pastor on another article I recently came across. Seraphimblade 11:41, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

It's sort of funny for me too, with Jews for Jesus, when I first saw how much people wanted to make them look bad, I was all set to reaserch more about JfJ and go to the trenches so to speak in their defense, but as I kept looking more and more, I couldn't actually get the information I needed to test whether or not JfJ was actually an organization worthy of defense :/. This whole time I just can't choose a side on an article where it seems like most people would have one, an unusual thing for a fundamentalist indeed. I've been learning things though, mostly about Judaism, (and I don't like what i've been learning at all) but haven't been able to learn much more about JfJ.... Homestarmy 19:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

You scare me. You don't sound like one of them!  :) (PLEASE don't take offense, it was meant as humor.) Orangemarlin 19:41, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey, putting everything to the test is part of the Bible too, and if I can't put these JfJ folks to the test properly I really have serious problems with trying to defend them or anything. Homestarmy 19:44, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Wither Martin Luther

Believe it or not, things are quiet over here. We've gotten the article down to fighting weight and we're in shooting range of FA quality. I've opened a discussion on the talk page about what is still needed in the article. I'd love to have you opine. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 14:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

JfJ

Hi Homestarmy -- just curious if you had another suggestion for permissions to continue editing the JfJ article. Ramsquire and I both made alternative suggestions, but if you had another idea, we'd probably agree. Best, Mackan79 18:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The other idea with the contentious parts seems fine, I don't often edit them anyway, I supported. Homestarmy 14:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Tower of babel

Why not campaign against linguistics? And the teaching of many aspects of linguistics in colleges and high schools? Grammar? Etymologies? A lot of information taught and studied in linguistics disagrees with the biblical account, after all.--Filll 03:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

It is hypocritcal to be offended by evolution and not to be offended by the field of Historical linguistics.--Filll 03:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Err, did you mean to give someone else this comment? I don't think i've contributed to the Tower of Babel article recently. In order to be offended by evolution, i'd have to have pride in my own beliefs, which would indeed be hypocritical, but not in the way you suppose... Homestarmy 14:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Your own wiki

If you and editors with similar views started your wikipedia, the living wikipedia or whatever, you may find more benefit than having to constantly lock horns with the unilluminated. Your community has achieved a lot on WP, it would be a shame if most of it became lost in edits. This has been the solution to the interests of a group being achieved. Just a suggestion. Fred 03:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. given the power of faith it could outrank this wiki one day! Fred

I would direct anyone interested to CreationWiki or ResearchID Wiki. There are probably more out there too.--Filll 05:28, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I was going to join creationwiki, but their policies just seem way too authoritative, having to have your content looked at by admins before it goes live? What happens if I want to skip ahead the old argument chain, create some new argument of my own against something evolutionary, and no admins let me because an "old" response is "good enough"? You won't be able to get rid of me that easily Filll :D. Homestarmy 15:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Pardon my interjection "This page, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, is one of Wikipedia's three content policies. The other two are Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research." You may find this 'authoritative' too. Many editors, myself included i hope, adhere to these policies in the hope that others will. All other content can reside at a number of sites. Would you 'edit' the encyclopedias at your local library. Try to understand the principles at work here. You interests are well represented on wikipedia. Your faith is not to be found in here. And you need good eye contact for evangelism. yours faithfully Fred 17:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Authority can be good, but creationwiki isn't in the same class as Wikipedia. An administrator doesn't have to check every edit you make before it goes live. And I must beg to differ as to the need for eye contact, while it is rather difficult to evangelize in the same style as one would in real life here, written words are quite an acceptable and well-used medium for evangelism. Besides, evangelism isn't exactly the only thing Christians are commanded to do in society you know. Homestarmy 17:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I am a member of CreationWiki myself. I have not contributed anything yet however. I did not yet join the intelligent design one. I am of course a member of EvoWiki. I also contribute to some other Wikis. I do not want to "get rid" of you. It is just useful to know of other good wikis. For example, I think WikiTravel is far underused.--Filll 16:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

GA/R

If an article has a majority o f pass in it's GA/R does it mean that it becomes a GA. Thanks. Kyriakos 21:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize it wasn't a GA heh, I passed it. Homestarmy 23:23, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Missions, Evangelism History

Dear Homes: I tell people call me anything but late-for-dinner! 8-) The big boy on the block is Kenneth Scott Latourette, A history of the expansion of Christianity 7 v. New York ; London : Harper & Brothers, 1937-1945. Christian History, a magazine, also does a nice job in a more popular tone. They are on the web. If you have a little more specific question, let me know, and I'll tickle the keyboard. It's what I do. (Think of me as a wired reference librarian). --CTSWyneken^(talk) 12:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but only in snippet view at google.--CTSWyneken^(talk) 21:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Some great fundamentalist values

Pat Robertson:

Ok, i've pretty much stopped trusting this man ever since the assasination of Chavez comment, but for a person who's also made what seem to be false prophecies, (Remember Bush winning in a landslide, among numerous other things) I don't see how he's a fundamentalist. You can use language like a Fundamentalist without being a Fundamentalist. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• He calls church-state separation a “lie of the left”

Current interpretations of it by the left side of the political spectrum do seem quite incorrect, it may very well be a lie the way they tell it. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• thinks Christians like him should lead the world.

I don't think anyone is quite so Pat Roberston as Pat Robertson, he seems pretty one of a kind. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• His 1991 book The New World Order was based on a host of anti-Semitic sources, although Robertson has always been pro-Israel for end-times theological reasons.

Anyone can use anti-semetic sources for something without actually agreeing with the premise of anti-semitism, and I presume that since he supports Israel he doesn't agree that all Jews should die or whatever garbage spews out of anti-semetical groups these days. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• The same book opines that former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush may have been unwitting dupes for Lucifer.

So? For all I know, before I became a Christian, I may of been an unwitting dupe for Satan on some level, maybe you too, hey, maybe half the world is as long as he's dealing with probabilities. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• On his TV show, Robertson once charged that Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians represent “the spirit of the Antichrist.”

Yes, because as we all know, digging the divide deeper between groups which aren't necessarily compleate heretics is compleatly Fundamentalist. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• In a Sept. 13, 2001, diatribe, he asserted that the terrorist attacks on America happened because of the Supreme Court’s rulings in favor of church-state separation.

A man can change in more than 5 years. Not that Roberston necessarily has changed enough, but once again, he doesn't seem the most Fundamentalist of Fundamentalists to me.

• Over the years, the failed presidential candidate has often dallied with brutal dictators. He celebrated Guatemala’s Pentecostal strongman Efrain Rios Montt, lauded Frederick Chiluba of Zambia as a model for American politicians, hunted for gold with Liberia’s Charles Taylor and did business with Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. (He was caught using relief airplanes owned by his charity, Operation Blessing, to ferry diamond-mining equipment in and out of Zaire.)

Now you know why many Fundamentalists are easily skeptical of Televangelist types. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Robertson Quote: “The fact that [the courts] are trying to ignore this country’s religious heritage is just horrible. They are taking our religion away from us under the guise of separation of church and state. There was never any intention that our government would be separate from God Almighty. Never, never, never in the history of this land did the founders of this country or those who came after them think that was the case.”

What, it is horrible. Ever read a book called "Three Cheers for our Secular State"? It might be a bit dated, but the sentiment of the book seems alive and well with current separation of church and state interpretations. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Dr. James C. Dobson:

• lauded corporal punishment for children at a time when many child-rearing experts were recommending against it.

.....and when, apparently, the majority of parents are still for it: (MSN isn't exactly the most conversative news site out there too) [1]

• refers to church-state separation as the “phantom” clause in the Constitution.

It is.....? Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• He frequently lambastes gays, legal abortion and the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Depending on what you mean by "lambastes" gays, (which I frequently have found basically means "opposes homosexuality") these values sound fine to me, I don't see the problem here. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• In a 1996 radio address, he attacked the concept of tolerance, calling it “kind of a watchword of those who reject the concepts of right and wrong….It’s kind of a desensitization to evil of all varieties.”

Well, yes, today's concept of tolerance is quite terrible indeed. And the problem here is....?Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• Two years before that, an FOF magazine attacked the Girl Scouts for being agents of “humanism and radical feminism.”

I'd need to reaserch this more to come to a conclusion on the girl scouts. I mean come on, who knows what goes into those cookies anyway? :D Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• More recently, Dobson lashed out at a pro-tolerance video produced for public schools that featured popular cartoon characters, among them SpongeBob SquarePants, because the group that produced it put a “tolerance pledge” on its Web site that included gays.

So would I, I personally like SpongeBob SquarePants, and the idea of some tolerance people taking advantage of a character as innocent as SpongeBob to try and defend near-absolute moral relativity is preposterous. And I don't mean just preposterous as in "I don't like it" either, SpongeBob as a character does not belong in that kind of situation, and its a terrible stretch to use that character to further a philosophical agenda. (At least, it is now, SpongeBob makers may make his character develop more in the future) Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Rev. D. James Kennedy:

• His “Coral Ridge Hour” mixes fundamentalism with strident attacks on public education, gays, evolution, legal abortion, “secular humanism” and other Religious Right targets.

Wanting people to Home-school their children is no attack on public education, he's always attacked Homosexuality and the actions of Homosexuals rather than personally attacking the Homosexuals themselves, (at least as far as i've watched him) and I see no problem with the rest, does any of it surprise you particularily? Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Alan Sears:

• He was the first Religious Right figure to assert that the cartoon character SpongeBob Square­Pants might be gay

It's easy to over-react in today's political and social environment, and I can understand how people who haven't watched much SpongeBob SquarePants might have a premature reaction to him. But their quite wrong, SpongeBob is far too innocent a character to be a homosexual or even know what that word means. It just doesn't add up. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• has criticized the 1959 comedy film “Some Like It Hot” for promoting cross-dressing.

So was it? Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Sears Quote: “One by one, more and more bricks that make up the artificial ‘wall of separation’ between church and state are being removed and Christians are once again being allowed to exercise their constitutional right to equal access to public facilities and funding.” (January 2004 e-mail alert)

Debateable, but that would be nice if it's true. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Donald Wildmon: Wildmon, 68, has flirted with anti-Semitism, suggesting that Jews control the entertainment industry. The AFA’s Journal has also reprinted articles from The Spotlight, an anti-Semitic newspaper. In December, Wildmon said evangelicals may stop supporting Israel if Jewish leaders don’t stop criticizing the Religious Right.

I fail to see how this person is Fundamentalist with that kind of attitude. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Wildmon Quote: “Anti-prayer/Anti-Christian groups – like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State – have teamed up with liberal judges on the U.S. Supreme Court and are stripping away our religious freedom.” (Fall 2000 fund-raising letter)

Even though he might not be Fundamentalist, this may be more or less accurate. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Family Research Council:

• Recently, it has led the Religious Right effort to attack the federal courts and strip judges of their ability to hear church-state cases, sponsoring a series of anti-court rallies called “Justice Sunday.”

....Wha? Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Quote: “The [Supreme] Court has become increasingly hostile to Christianity. It represents more of a threat to representative government than any other force – more than budget deficits, more than terrorism.” (“Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” conference, March 7, 2005)

And, at the time of that posting, it probably was, what with frequent 5 to 4 decisions against Christianity-based opinions and whatnot. By siding against us in so many abortion-related cases, more un-born children have died as a result than everyone who died in 9/11 combined. I'm not sure why you think I might be surprised or somehow shocked by this opinion of FRC, unless you're trying to out me or something, but I assure you, people who've gotten to know me deeply already know i'm quite Fundamentalist, and I fail to see what's to be gained. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Jerry Falwell:

• His newspaper labeled the children’s show character Tinky Winky a stalking horse for the gay-rights movement in 1999. *He has asserted that the Antichrist is alive today and is Jewish.
• Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Falwell appeared on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” and opined that God had lifted his protection and allowed “the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”

The teletubbies is possibly one of the creepiest looking shows i've ever seen or heard of, and whether its a front of the homosexual-rights movement or not, I still wouldn't recommend anyone watch it. Not because of something Fundamentalist related, but because shows like that are just increadibly disturbing on a deeper level. The antichrist comment may or may not be true, I don't see how that's anti-semetical or something, but once again, now you know why many Fundamentalists are easily skeptical of televangelist types.

Falwell Quote: “Separation of Church and State has long been the battle cry of civil libertarians wishing to purge our glorious Christian heritage from our nation’s history. Of course, the term never once appears in our Constitution and is a modern fabrication of discrimination.” (“Falwell Fax,” April 10, 1998)

Sounds accurate to me.....? Come on, surely you'd think i'd agree with something like that, I mean, it fits the stereotype of someone like me and everything :D. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon:

• . He has been criticized for acting as a front for gambling interests on at least two occasions. An aide to disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff once called Sheldon “Lucky Louie” in an e-mail when the two worked together on a lobbying project on behalf of the legalized gambling industry.

Doesn't sound Fundamentalist to me. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• For many years, Sheldon carved out a niche for TVC by engaging in unrelenting gay bashing. When other Religious Right groups began moving in on this turf in the 1990s, Sheldon diversified, ramping up his assaults on church-state separation, public education and the federal judiciary.

Ditto. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Sheldon Quote: “A dangerous Marxist/Leftist/Homo­sex­ual/Is­lamic coalition has formed – and we’d better be willing to fight it with everything in our power. These people are playing for keeps. Their hero, Mao Tse Tung, is estimated to have murdered upwards of 60 million people during his reign of terror in China. Do we think we can escape such persecution if we refuse to fight for what is right?” (“The War on Christianity,” column, TVC Web site, Dec. 13, 2005)

Now that's clearly just kind of desperate. Homestarmy 20:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Source: [2] --Filll 16:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Just wanted your reaction, that is all. Some of it makes me just laugh out loud. But I could find far far worse and more outrageous than this to post. After all, I never posted anything about Haggard or Swaggert or Phelps or any number of other more extreme types. These are the mainstream, and the biggest operations in evangelical Christianity in terms of dollars.--Filll 20:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

You do realize that you might not think these guys are working with a full deck, but when we hear this stuff, we think all of you (lumping all Fundamentalists together, which probably drives you nuts) are out to have us all executed by the side of the road, and have us wear yellow Stars of David on our coats. We have a cultural memory that makes us shiver when we read it. Orangemarlin 21:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Some of these characters might be more in the Evangelical community than the Fundamentalist community, which as the Evangelicalism article points out, is a term which "has been all but relinquished to the "moderates," rather than liberals or fundamentalists." And for good reason, while all Fundamentalists are Evangelical, not all Evangelicals are Fundamentalists, although historically Evangelicalism has been almost solely on the rightward side of social issues, that has changed drastically. Now you'll find Evangelicals on both sides of almost any issue, because while Fundamentalism implies the Fundamentals of the Christian faith, Evangelical simply means, you know, evangelizing. The message actually being evangelized varies often, and quite radically. You'll find Social Gospel people such as Brian McMcleran or Rob Bell generally on the left, Roberston would arguably be on the semi-right side, Kingdom Now theologians wandering about saying who knows what these days, Prosperity Gospel people often seeming to say whatever will get their church the most donations for, quite frankly, who knows what, and it's hard to keep track of it all. Homestarmy 22:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I guess. Well most of them strike me as dangerous and hate-filled and maybe more than just a tad deluded.--Filll 00:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Closing GARs

I appreciate your contributions in closing GARs, but I noticed that you closed one when only 1 person other than the nominator had voted. Please remember that the GAR is really more about consensus than about voting. When a unanimous 4-0 vote comes around, then that could be declared consensus, but 2-0 is rather low. Also, please do not count the nominator as a vote when you post the results of the GAR. Thank you, and I hope that you can continue to help in closing GARs. Diez2 03:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Err, which one was it? I've always counted the nominator unless they don't seem very sure of their reasons for listing, and nobodies said anything before. Homestarmy 14:10, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, Louis Jordan. Well, in a way it was sort of a 3-0 because Agne had warned it so long ago, and with such a long warning time, it could of been delisted then whether a review was made or not. Homestarmy 14:12, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Christianity (Nicene Creed)

I noticed you took part in the straw poll. Please visit the talk page to engage in the discussion, so we may build consensus. Vassyana 00:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

HiPER

I was reviewing HiPER and noticed that it had a lack of inline citations. The editors noted that there are sources but they aren't published could you help and possibly give suggestions on how this can be resolved. Tarret 22:00, 20 February 2007 (UTC)