John Aaron Matthew

Greetings...

Hello, John Aaron Matthew, and welcome to Wikipedia!

To get started, please click here.

For a list of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, please click here.

Warning: Wikipedia can be addictive!

Happy editing!

-- -- -- 21:13, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

March 2018

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to Exodus, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. If you only meant to make a test edit, please use the sandbox for that. Thank you. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 23:02, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

A summary of site policies and guidelines you may find useful

• Please sign your posts on talk pages with four tildes (~~~~, found next to the 1 key), and please do not alter other's comments.
• "Truth" is not the criteria for inclusion, verifiability is.
• We do not publish original thought nor original research. We merely summarize reliable sources without elaboration or interpretation.
• Reliable sources typically include: articles from magazines or newspapers (particularly scholarly journals), or books by recognized authors (basically, books by respected publishers). Online versions of these are usually accepted, provided they're held to the same standards. User generated sources (like Wikipedia) are to be avoided. Self-published sources should be avoided except for information by and about the subject that is not self-serving (for example, citing a company's website to establish something like year of establishment).
• Articles are to be written from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is not concerned with facts or opinions, it just summarizes reliable sources. This usually means that secular academia is given prominence over any individual sect's doctrines, though those doctrines may be discussed in an appropriate section that clearly labels those beliefs for what they are.

Reformulated:

• "Truth" is not the only criteria for inclusion, verifiability is also required.
• Always cite a source for any new information. When adding this information to articles, use <ref>reference tags like this</ref>, containing the name of the source, the author, page number, publisher or web address (if applicable).
• We do not publish original thought nor original research. We're not a blog, we're not here to promote any ideology.
• A subject is considered notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.
• Reliable sources typically include: articles from magazines or newspapers (particularly scholarly journals), or books by recognized authors (basically, books by respected publishers). Online versions of these are usually accepted, provided they're held to the same standards. User generated sources (like Wikipedia) are to be avoided. Self-published sources should be avoided except for information by and about the subject that is not self-serving (for example, citing a company's website to establish something like year of establishment).
• Articles are to be written from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is not concerned with facts or opinions, it just summarizes reliable sources. Real scholarship actually does not say what understanding of the world is "true," but only with what there is evidence for. In the case of science, this evidence must ultimately start with physical evidence. In the case of religion, this means only reporting what has been written and not taking any stance on doctrine.
• Material must be proportionate to what is found in the source cited. If a source makes a small claim and presents two larger counter claims, the material it supports should present one claim and two counter claims instead of presenting the one claim as extremely large while excluding or downplaying the counter claims.
• We do not give equal validity to topics which reject and are rejected by mainstream academia. For example, our article on Earth does not pretend it is flat, hollow, and/or the center of the universe.

Also, not a policy or guideline, but something important to understand the above policies and guidelines: Wikipedia operates off of objective information, which is information that multiple persons can examine and agree upon. It does not include subjective information, which only an individual can know from an "inner" or personal experience. Most religious beliefs fall under subjective information. Wikipedia may document objective statements about notable subjective claims (i.e. "Christians believe Jesus is divine"), but it does not pretend that subjective statements are objective, and will expose false statements masquerading as subjective beliefs (cf. Indigo children).

You may also want to read User:Ian.thomson/ChristianityAndNPOV. We at Wikipedia are highbrow (snobby), heavily biased for the academia. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:14, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

March 2018

Please stop adding unsourced content, as you did to Exodus. This contravenes Wikipedia's policy on verifiability. If you continue to do so, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:17, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Edit war warning

Your recent editing history at The Exodus shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Jytdog (talk) 17:52, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Advice

See WP:CIR#Bias-based. This encyclopedia is dedicated to mainstream academic learning, not to your own religious orthodoxy (and not to Mormon, Moonist or Scientologist orthodoxy—we don't state these as proven fact, in the voice of Wikipedia). I know that you feel that you are on a mission to protect faith from knowledge. But we have no use for such troublemakers, all indicates that you're heading towards a topic ban or even to being indeffed. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:09, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

You don't seem to get what "myth" means in an academic context. In an academic context, a myth refers to a story where the truth value lies on some philosophical or mystical ground, regardless of its historical accuracy. A number of Christian authors have referred to even (C.S. Lewis even referred to the story of Jesus as "a myth that is also a fact"). Thus, "foundation myth" is not anti-Christian or anti-Semitic. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:04, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Also, there's a serious difference between theology (a branch of philosophy) and archaeology (a branch of history, with considerable influence from science). Theology has about as much authority on matters of archaeology as Bioethics does over Paleontology. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:08, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

• Listen to Ian, and please read the link in the first comment in this section. Your knowledge of your own religion's tenets, practices, teachings, scriptures and even history does not make you an expert in actual History. If you persist in pushing the POV that this article must take a stance which is in agreement with your religious principles, you will end up blocked from editing. However, if you can take a step back and work to understand how and why Wikipedia does things, then you will be able to continue to contribute, and to grow as an editor. I and many others would much prefer you take the latter course. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:38, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

From Ivy Plus to US state universities, they teach the same fact: the Exodus did not happen. Wikipedia sides with such teachings, it does not cater to true believers. Secular does not mean atheistic, it simply means that the clergy does not have by default the upper hand in all matters of scholarship. Tgeorgescu (talk) 06:43, 10 March 2018 (UTC)