User:Ian.thomson

^{Hi, I did not misspell my own damn name, there's just not a damn "P" anywhere in there!}

Wikipedia does not care about you or me being qualified scholars. Wikipedia is not a scholarly site, but a summary of sources that speak for themselves. We all have the right to edit, but there are rules to make sure that proper sources are used for appropriate articles and editors are civil.

I am not an administrator or moderator. I realize I am nobody special. I do not care what religion or worldview you do or do not believe. I have made my religious and philosophical beliefs open because if I was trying to enforce any sort of secondary agenda (which I am not), I would be smart enough to hide the reasons behind that agenda; and also so that other users may know what sort of articles I may have an interest in helping with. I am more concerned with keeping the articles I view within the guidelines than I am with bullying anyone. Thinking that I am an admin or mod, pointing out I am neither those nor someone special, or accusing me of religious zealotry or any other sort of bullying will not: convince me to not enforce rules (just ask about them!), somehow turn any negative edits by you into good ones (just ask for help!), undo any reports I have made, somehow turn any postive enforcement of the rules by me into bullying. If I'm not responding, that's probably because It is approximately 1:01 AM where this user lives (South Carolina). [] and I may be asleep, in classes, with my girlfriend, or I totally may just not care enough to bother. If it's before 8 AM or after 11 pm, you will definitely want me to respond. My grafitti page (sign it as a guestbook, give me a barnstar, screw with this instead of vandalizing my userpage, whatever) My wiki-business talk page My contributions A list of the times I've been confrontational with Christians. If your persecution complex demands that you accuse me of being religiously biased because I have undone your edits, read this. And now for those that aren't here because they're angry at me: When in doubt -Do what Jack Churchill would do. If that doesn't or will not work, do what Hunter S. Thompson would do. -Go on and assume I am the second coming of Jack Chick without viewing the evidence to the contrary on this page. Who I am I am a college student working on getting my English major (I plan to be a high school English teacher). I was born Methodist and raised a liberal Baptist on Bible stories, Star Wars, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Queen, Sierra's Quest games (particularly the Space Quest, King's Quest, and Police Quest games, as well as Conquests of the Longbow, the Castle of Dr. Brain, and Freddy Pharkas), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Batman: The Animated Series. I've also been playing Doom since it first came out. Ever since I was young I've had an interest in religion (beyond my own personal spirituality) and mythology. In high school I became interested in philosophy, more interested in fantasy, and began reading about "occult" topics as an extension of mythology studies. I took time off between high school and college and spent most of it in the library going through most of the books on religion, mythology, philosophy, and occultism. Also, I am a part of a world wide conspiracy, knowledge of which by the uninitiated will result in assassination. Oh, hell, someone thinks I'm not joking. Apparently, I am not an official editor. This was pointed out to me here. My mother has a blog on one of our ancestors and his descendants - http://samuelreedfamily.blogspot.com/. Although Blogspot isn't an acceptable source for Wikipedia, we almost need to make an exception for her work. Also, according to my friends, I'm a terrible person for this. As you can see, I sometimes like to tailor warnings for vandals. I have started working on ChaCha. I have an account on ChaCha, but it's not worth it, I might be able to pull $1 an hour. To avoid anything resembling a conflict of interest, I will not edit the article ChaCha (search engine), nor any article that I am aware relate to it, like Scott A. Jones. Why I am a Christian (In response to one Wikipedian asking me a question I have been asked a great deal off Wikipedia) (Why is not the same as how. Why I believe and what I believe are related, but they are different issues) I believe that the universe is becoming more complex because the end result of that complexity demands it (the Omega Point). Since real evil is ultimately self defeating, and the Omega point had limitless time to develop, the Omega point is infinitely benevolent. I believe the Omega point is beyond our concept of time and space and is therefore transcendent. But, because it goes beyond all boundaries, it is also closer to us then our own jugular vein and it is therefore immanent. I believe that humans (by which I do not just mean homo sapiens, but probably also apes and dolphins) are both material and memetic creatures (our selves are composed of a number of ideas just as our bodies are composed of various chemicals), and I see no reason to believe that the memetic portion must die with the material portion. I believe our memetic selves are aware of the Omega point, and are frightened of its enormous nature. We realize that everything evil we do in theory hinders it, and that being benevolent in theory helps it. This is the basis for all religion. However, all good we do is ultimately insignificant and this becomes clear to us with time (which we'll have plenty of upon death). I believe that the Omega Point contacted us as Jesus of Nazareth (who was neither transcendant or immanent, but personal), who died as a sacrifice so that we don't have to worry about fulfilling a quota (any benevolence is benevolence enough, any evil will not stop the Omega Point). To translate all this into more common Christian terms, I'm a Trinitarian who follows the Apostle's Creed. I scoff at the idea of a white-haired, bearded, invisible man in the sky that gives blessings to society's favored and dooms to the downtrodden, and who is opposed by a guy that lives underground with fire and all the interesting dead. Satan as a metaphor for mediocrity, despair, and unrealistic selfishness (not simply self-worth, but suicidally refusing to acknowledge the relationships that allow one to live) does not make Satan less real. Forming a meme, those ideas are quite deadly. I believe the Bible is actually multiple texts by multiple authors containing mythology (a myth is not untrue, it is just true in a different sense) and philosophy, which was inspired by God. I believe that as each text was written by individuals, the Bible must be interpretted by the individual (if the individual concludes that they would be a better Christian within an organization such as the Catholic church, that's between them and God). I believe that only the individual can be Christian: buckets, music, and nations cannot be Christian. I believe that the crowd (which is not an individual and only pretends to be Mithraist, Christian, Communist, or Muslim) persecutes to maintain hegemony. It must not be fought because fighting against that Black Iron Prison only makes you a guard in it. Instead, it must be struggled against by simply being yourself. Christianity is for the individual, not the crowd. Christianity does not require any particular political view. It does not require that one believe the world is going to end soon. Personally, I think the Antichrist was Nero, and that the eschatological prophecies not yet fulfilled are the earthly establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven (which I equate with the real Communist revolution, not to be confused with the pretended ones that have occured in China, Cuba, and Russia), the resurrection of the dead, and the second coming of Christ. If there is a future Antichrist, I believe it will be Nietzsche's Last Man, instead of a diabolic individual. My influences are Zoroaster, Heraclitus, Mozi, Confucius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, the author of Ecclesiastes, Sophiology, Plato (particularly through Paul of Tarsus), Meister Eckhart, Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Robert E. Howard, Teilhard de Chardin, and Philip K. Dick. Useless trivia that is less likely to be read than the previous stuff My friends tell me I am an accomplished Dungeon Master and they are genuinely disappointed when they find out I am not the DM for a session. I am one of the few people among my friends that really understood the last two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion without having them explained to me. To date, I am the only one that also hasn't had any major life issues, but I was also the only one not sober while watching these. I have written two papers where the opening paragraphs were full of alliteration. One got an A-, the other got a D and a death threat from the teacher. I am actually slightly better at many sobriety tests after I've had a couple (especially reciting the alphabet backwards). I have made references to Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, european football riots, transgender individuals, gay nightclubs, zombies, Nazis, Kevin Smith movies, and South Park while in Sunday School (in a manner relevant to the discussion, no less). When I took an online Zener card test, I consistantly got a score of 3/25. I still don't believe in psychic powers, but dang am I good at picking the wrong card (statistically, I should have ended up with an average score of 5/25 after some time, unless it was simulating the removal of the cards from the deck, which would have resulted in a 8/25 average score over time). I am a Discordian Pope, even though I am not a Discordian. I will excommunicate any Discordian that says this is not possible, de-excommunicate those excommunicated for accepting this as so, re-excommunicate those de-excommunicated for saying this is not possible, re-re-excommunicate those de-excommunicated that I previously excommunicated, re-de-excommunicate and de-re-excommunicate those excommunicated for being de-excommunicated by me, and on and on. I also call no-excommuncation-back-sies, nyany nyany boo boo. Fried hallibut. I like to imagine that somewhere in Britain a school child seriously believes he or she is vandalizing articles with the words "colour," "rumour," and so on by removing the u's, and that somewhere in America there is a school kid putting the u's back in for the same reason. Sad to say, but if I laugh at it, I'm probably not going to be the person that reverts it. Pages I hope to improve My observations page I've started used to spending too much time in the recent changes page, mostly distributing a7 tags. I may go back when I have time. The article Abaddon is something I regularly check on. The pages in categories Angels in Christianity, Demons in Christianity, Demons in the Apocrypha, Demons in Occultism, although not ones already well maintained like the Michael, Gabriel, Satan, Lucifer, etc. Many of these need to be cleaned up, many of the articles in Demons in Christianity properly belong in the sections Demons in Occultism or Demons in the Apocrypha (which in its current state should overlap with the category Demons in Judaism, since the Book of Enoch was Pre-Christian). If the only edits I see done by a person are inaccurate and I have time I do go through their contributions page. Normally if it gets to the point where I do this, other people have taken care of the other edits the person has made, or the person has only made those few edits. I need to remember to go through the articles that link to LGBT issues and Voodoo and change it to LGBT topics and Voodoo. Done, and then some. Gonna start looking at Worked with Dougweller in removing all mentions, uses, or links to or of http://historyhuntersinternational.org/, because it is a nothing but a blog with no evidence of credentials (if they are professors, why would they not want their name associated with that work in a more publically recognized journal?), and does contain some crackpot information (Alexander the Great's existance should be questioned in a similar manner to the Christ myth theory?). As far as we know, it's just a chimp with down syndrome banging on the keyboard. Edit: It's gone, but I'll still check from time to time. I've started to replaced all uses of The Dying God.com since it's a self-published source (and in a few cases, counter to most other sources). I'll be checking in on this from time to time. I'm planning on writing a page on why Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy is not just an acceptable standard for Christians to edit by, but an excellent one. Not a piece to bash Christianity, but something acceptable to evangelicals (in the older, originally intended, sense of the word, I hate what some people have done to that word). There've been a number of my spiritual bretheren I've wanted to lay hands on in an unorthodox fashion over for attempting censorship and pushing their own exegesis. I'm keeping an eye on the uses of the website panspermia.org, which is run by an architect, not a published scientist. If I had the time, I'd check to see who added the links to begin with... Update: Looking a little bit more, it appears that Brig Klyce, the architect that runs that site, has been using us to promote his little blog. Userboxes Favorite Entertainment C&HThis user reads Calvin and Hobbes. This prophet is in his house. Clerks.This user is not even supposed to be here today! TDSThis user watches the most trusted name in fake news. Melange This user has a spice addiction. Good news, everyone! This user is a fan of Futurama! RDThis user is full of smeg. This user knows "...there is no spoon". ¡This user knows the Chewbacca Defense and is not afraid to use it! STAR TREKIan.thomson is a fan of Star Trek: The Original Series.TOS STAR TREKIan.thomson is a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation.TNG This user plays Paper and pencil games. D&D This user plays Dungeons & Dragons. CGThis user's alignment is Chaotic Good: the "Rebel." STAR WARSThis user is a Star Wars fan. What do you want? I n f o r m a t i o n.Nº2 SEELEThis user is a member of SEELE. 42This user has the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything. Personal This user is male. Alba This user is of Scottish ancestry. Y'allThis here user talks Southern, y'all. This user is interested in firearms and is generally knowledgeable about them. This user wants to tax the rich to provide health care, education and welfare for everyone.†$ £ ¥ € This user would like to be a teacher. USCThis user attends or attended the University of South Carolina. This user supports the ban on smoking in public places. This user is an omnivore. This user believes that caffeine is necessary in large doses daily. This user enjoys a varied sex life. (Alternating between hands constitutes varied, right?) WUSA SMAR AIPGFThis user is a White, USAmerican, straight, male, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, pro-gay feminist - and proud of it! This user thinks nationalism is outdated. This user prefers warm weather. This user's SteamID is ian_thomson. This user is a WikiOgre. 75pxSome admin thought it'd be funny to give this user rollback rights. (verify) Interests and Influences This user is interested in Abrahamic religions. This user is interested in alchemy. This user is interested in the Bible. This user is interested in Buddhism. This user is interested in Chinese folk religion. This user is interested in existentialism. This user is interested in Gnosticism This user is interested in philosophy. This user is interested in the Qur'an. This user is interested in Taoism. This user is interested in Zoroastrianism. This user is interested in ancient civilizations. This user is interested in the Middle Ages. This user is interested in the Renaissance period. LITThis user's favourite subject is Literature. Religion This user has Trinitarian beliefs. This user affirms the tenets of Arminianism. GraceThis user firmly believes in God's (free) grace via faith alone in Christ alone and not in Lordship or works-based soteriologies. This user believes GOD saves everyone - including YOU! This user is a Christian existentialist. This user believes that Evolution and Christianity are mutually supportive. This user is a Singularitarian. This user is a humanist. This user is a Liberal Christian. RLThis user is on the religious left. This user is sick and tired of Religion's attempts to hijack government and wants stronger separation of church and state. no funThis user would argue that, despite its name, there is hardly any "fun" at all in fundamentalism...! 道This user uses no way as Way. Genuine and Authentic Discordian Pope. So please treat him/her right. Notepad This is some stuff I keep in a text file on the desktop of my laptop (filled with some nowiki tags to not be active code, and to turn off nowiki tags I have), just in case I'm editting from a different computer or something. It's pretty much just commonly used templates, some uses of templates that I find helpful, and some common messages. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:35, 16 March 2010 (UTC)