Cleanly Removing a User Profile from Windows 7

One IT trick I learned a long time ago that seems to fix a lot of problems, especially with users who’ve been in a Windows system for years, is called “Rebuilding A Profile”. The most dramatic example of problems caused by a corrupted user profile that I’ve come across was from an old engineer at the power company. He was one of those guys who’d been with the power company since anyone could remember and had used the same user profile for over a decade at that point. It had become so corrupted that he would log in, then it would make him log in again. On top of that it made his computer run extremely slow and screwed up his Outlook functionality to the point he had to enter his password twice before it would connect to exchange.

It had gone on so long that he’d assumed it was because of his position and weird security settings he had. He’d been doing this for so long that he’d never bothered to report it to IT and only when I’d replaced his computer with a new one and noticed this issue did anyone take action. It took about 30 seconds to fix.

I’ve seen other less dramatic problems like this everywhere I’ve worked and the solution is usually the same. You delete the user’s current profile and then let them log back in and Windows will rebuild it.

CAUTION: This will pretty well wipe out any and all user customization, desktop backgrounds, Outlook data, practically everything. I really only suggest this for domained networks. If you have a network where every user is a local user name don’t attempt this or it WILL cause you some problems.

First thing you need to do is determine where exactly the user profile is stored. You can do this by going into Active Directory Users and Computers, right clicking on the user and clicking on Properties. Under the profiles tab, you’ll see a Profile Path box. If it’s blank, that means it’s a ‘local profile’ and stored on their computer. If it’s got something like \servernameprofiles$username that means it’s a roaming or server-side profile and that’s where it’s at. You’ll also want to take note of where their Home directory has been mapped to, again the same thing applies, if it’s blank it’s a normal local home folder, if it’s got a location mapped it’s in the place mentioned.

Once you’ve determined this follow these steps:

1. Log them out of Windows and log into an administrator account on the machine they are going to use, if they have more than one it’s not a bad idea to do this for all of them but it is typically unnecessary.
2. Go into their Home Folder and make sure you back up their Desktop, Documents, and Favorites folders. You can just move these to a temporary directory. The default place for this is in C:\Users\Username . You’ll want to back up those basic folders on their local machine. If the home directory is on a network share, you’ll probably only see those folders that have been redirected there and typically the three I just mentioned are what get re-mapped to a network share. Go ahead and back those up. They might have other folders they’ve made here as well, you’ll want a copy of those too.
3. The next thing you want to do AFTER you’ve got a backup of their stuff is delete their profile folder on the local machine.  This will always be the C:\Users\Username folder mentioned in step one, whether that’s where their profile is located or not.
4. If they have a roaming or network profile go ahead and delete that profile folder too. If their home folder is separate you can just leave it in most cases.
1. Note: If when you complete these steps the problem still isn’t fixed, it’s a good idea to repeat all this again and delete their home folder too. Just make sure to make new backups for when anything has changed.
5. Next go into the Registry Editor on that machine. You can do this by clicking the start button and just typing “Regedit” into the search box. Older versions of windows you can do this by clicking Run and entering “regedit”
6. Go to the following Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionProfileList. You’ll see a bunch of sub folders and keys that look something like S-1-5-1533239630-186…. Obviously yours will be slightly different from mine so I will only give a random example. Click through the folders with the longer names and you’ll see they contain a key called “ProfileImagePath”. Look for one where that key’s value is the folder you deleted before. When you find it; delete that containing folder on the left (the S-1-5-21-143152534-1231432-1222 one, not the ProfileList folder). This will avoid the “Temporary Profile” error that Windows 7 is prone to have when you just delete the folders.
7. Log out of your administrator account and reboot the computer.
8. Have the user log in again. They’ll notice their desktop is mostly blank, documents are gone and so forth. Just move the files you backed up back into their proper folders and the next time they log in they’ll see them.
9. Set them up on that computer as if they were new. Get Outlook setup, replace any printers that aren’t automatically deployed, etc.
10. Have them reboot the computer after you’re done and they should be good to go.

It seems complicated but all  you are really doing is basically the following:

1. Backing  up their stuff.
2. Deleting their Profile files.
3. Having them log in as if for the first time.
4. Putting their stuff back

It’s amazing the kind of weird problems this process fixed. Typically I use this as a last resort if I can’t actually fix whatever problem they are having. The reason for this is because the system thinks they have literally logged in to that computer for the first time. If you deleted all their network paths its just like they logged into the network for the first time. So they will have to set everything up like it used to be. That means desktop layout, background picture, and everything.

If you’re a home user and have odd problems that seem to defy explanation this will work for you too. Just do the steps and ignore the part about network folders.  Back up the stuff in your Documents, Videos, Photos, Downloads, Favorites, and whatever other folders (click on your name in the start menu to see these) by copying them to an external drive.  Delete the C:\users\yourname folder (log into a separate administrator account first). Then do step 6, and then log in as yourself and put all your stuff back into the right folders (don’t just drag the folders back, actually copy the contents from the backed up ones to the new ones). This is also a quick way to reorganize your stuff too.

-Aaron

Daily Post – Local Backups

I’ve written about backups a little before, though I can’t quite remember where I posted the information. It’s been a while.

I know a lot of places don’t have backups at all. Their data is protected by wishes and miracles. I don’t think people realize how lucky they are to never have a hard drive crash in the past decade. Generally you don’t see a lot of spinning media drives last more than about 5 years, though I have to say they seem to last longer when they are constantly spinning than when you turn them off and back on a lot. There are a lot of exceptions to this rule and as the superstition goes it doesn’t happen until someone says something about it.

A lot of places have good backups though and they take them off site, which is good. They really need to go to another geographical location though, not the boss’ house down the street. What gets missed a lot of times though is the idea of a ‘local backup’. This is just a copy of your data that sits on another disk or server somewhere in your location. These are enormously handy, not so much for redundancy but for recovering files people accidentally delete off of network shares. I hate to say this but Apple has a good thing with their Time Capsule device. If you are a Mac user it’s just retarded not to have one of these things as they can work as your wireless router too. It allows you to restore to a specific day in your backups so you can find previous versions of a file.

Of course Windows has this ability too but it’s rarely ever used and I think only came with Windows 7. If  you have any of the Server versions of Windows past 2003 they give you software to do this as well. The normal windows backup utility does a good job of backing up your stuff and has the ability to work with different versions of files. There’s also some file system tweaks you can do to give you previous version backup locally. Now if there were just a good way to have a network share recycle bin to prevent this from happening in the first place.

So consider doing daily, local backups with software that does differential or incremental backups. You never know when someone needs a specific version of a file they saved last Thursday, but changed Friday and it’s now Tuesday. We personally like Acronis Backup and Restore. The restores from a network share are kind of slow. I think it took about 45 minutes to locate a 94k file this morning and about two minutes to pull it off the backup. I tend to think that had a lot more to do with the device I was pulling it off of than Acronis as everything else their software does is almost unbelievably fast.

Daily – Missed Posts

I was beating myself up all weekend about missing a post Friday. Then I went and missed one yesterday too. I’ve figured out that my idea of posting these at 4:30 every day wasn’t the best as people tend to come in at that time and ask about last minute problems. Sometimes these problems are really bad and I can’t put them off after a blog post. That got me thinking about distractions in general.

It’s pretty easy to get distracted in the IT world. Someone always has a problem, someone always wants to talk about their home computer, something will always be broken. Vendors and management will call at the worst possible times. Stuff just seems to come up. So to that end I think it’s best to try and schedule some down time each day to work on online content and social media.

I think it was Jack Spirko on his “Five Minutes With Jack” podcast (Which is awesome by the way) said you should take an hour out of your day to work out new content. Now while I can’t do this at work I think fifteen minutes is a good period of time at work to post stuff like what I’ve been trying to do. Now obviously if you work for some place where they are very uptight about posting any kind of work details online this is not a good idea. What I have noticed is that most IT departments lack a good internal Knowledge Base, which should be essential at any company. One thing I will be working on is improving ours, because there are so many little fixes we come up with that should be documented. So here’s my ideas for improving ours.

• Add where to find stuff entries. Like “I can’t get this Office 2010 key to work”. Problem was that the MAK keys we have to use the install package on the media that was sent from Microsoft. It’s a protected knowledge base that we control access to, why weren’t the keys, that information as well as a link to the install package or which binder it was in posted on the Knowledge Base? Lazy IT guys that’s why. So stuff like that will be included now.
• How to do things properly within our protocol should be there. I’ll be putting in our standards for adding and removing new users in the Knowledge Base.
• Basically anything that is required for an IT person to do their job should be documented with whatever policies and protocols we have in place. I think the only exception is “How to Reboot a Computer”. That shouldn’t be in there because honestly if you don’t know how to do that you probably shouldn’t be touching one.

So those are my first baby steps towards better documentation.

-Aaron

Conspiracy Theory Project–List of Conspiracies and Topics

Last post on this was basically defining the project and how I would handle everything. I’ve started on my first post about the New World Order. It will take a fair amount of research to get all my ducks on a row on it so that I’m not just spouting my opinion, and can also cite my resources.

I decided I would make a list of topics I would definitely cover based on what comes up in the various churches, or from what my friends, relatives and other acquaintances approach me with.

• Cults – I will briefly talk about some of the more occult things people have asked me about and whether there’s a conspiracy about them or not. This is going to be a touchy subject because of my definition of ‘cult’ and ‘occult’. I do not consider Jehova’s Witnesses, Mormons, Islam, or the Catholic Church a cult even though their message is what most of my peers define as ‘cult’. That is something that adds to the Word of God. Mine is a bit narrower as even the most conservative of Protestant denominations can be called cults according to that definition.
• New World Order – This is a big deal. A lot of preachers talk about this, and get people scared about it. They warp what God’s Word says and show conspiracies in the shadows where there are none. This leads to a lot of worry, which Jesus clearly tells us not to do.
• Bullcrap Detection – A lot of churches will have people speak on the ‘hidden evils’ of the world that normal people aren’t privileged enough to see. They come in all sorts but for the most part they are entirely full of crap. I’ve come up with a couple of acid tests to tell when this is the case.
• Science/Technology/Religion – I don’t think these two are mutually exclusive but some tend to think so.
• End of the World – There is a lot of confusion on this subject. I will tackle this from a Baptist point of view. I’ll relate some other ideas that I’ve heard over the years.
• Natural Healing/Medicine – Not something I hear a lot of debate about in Baptist churches. Most pastors I’ve heard really encourage people to make use of modern medicine as the ongoing idea is that God has gifted physicians with the skills and knowledge to patch us up when we get sick. There are a few denominations that take to this whole medical conspiracy idea with far too much vigor.
• Magical Thinking/Supernatural Phenomena – Not really a conspiracy theory, but an issue I feel strongly about. As a Baptist I have some strong opinions on this as should most any Protestant. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who believe in ghosts, spirits and other supernatural phenomena. The Bible is extremely clear on these subjects and what the truth is about them.

The New World Order

This is one of those big posts that can easily be turned into a book if I am not careful. There is a lot of material out there on it, and frankly, no one ever agrees on exactly how this new world order will come to be. They only agree on it being a one world government.

Since this is a more religiously themed blog, I will stick to those theories I hear more from other Christians. They are many and varied, so this can get convoluted very quickly.

They can be broken down into a few basic categories. One is that the Anti-Christ will come and unite all the world governments under one rule. Another more common one that we will somehow manage to do this ourselves through some vast conspiracy and he will just step in as ruler. Yet another posits aliens of various sorts that will come and unite the world in peace and harmony and then Armageddon (yes I heard that in church once). Others involve Nephelim disguised as aliens, angels or whatever basically doing the same.

Essentially this is an idea about the end times.

There are others but those are what I get told about ad nauseum and hear the most about. So before I start in on tearing it apart I will pose a few questions.

What does the Bible say about this?
In this case are there any specific prophecies?
Is this something to worry about?
Is it even important?
Is it plausible this could happen?
What might trigger it?
According to scripture, what should I do about it?

Each of these questions needs to be answered as they relate to the topic. For purposes of this article we will assume the “New World Order” means “One World Government”

What Does The Bible Say About This? 

The largest collection of verses allegedly about a one world government resides in Revelations 13-20 or so, but the whole book talks about it. The rest are in Daniel (Daniel 2, Daniel 7) and other books with prophecies relating to the end times. Interestingly I can’t really find any reference specifically to a one world government. Revelations suggests that all the people on Earth will bow down before a set of “beasts” then goes on to explain that these beasts are symbolic (Revelations 17).  I found this verse a bit confusing myself. It’s when the angel explains about the beast in verse 8.

⁸The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is

Jesus Himself gives a prophecy and specifically refers to the prophet Daniel as to who to look to for information on the end of the world. He talks about it in Matthew 24 in straightforward terms with not much of the confusing symbolism you find in Revelation.

The most common interpretation of these visions and indeed the one that Daniel himself gave is that the beast is a metaphor for world government, and each of its heads/horns are a different kingdom of some kind. Eventually these ten kingdoms are weakened, defeated, replaced or manipulated somehow by another horn/head. This is the kingdom of the Anti-Christ. Now when I say kingdom, I really mean ‘nation’ or ‘country’ as a kingdom might be inside a much greater collective. So the best we can figure is that there will be ten major players in the world and they’ll be taken down by this ‘one world government’. A lot of people tend to believe this is going on now with the United Nations.

I looked over a basic listing of how the UN is currently set up on Wikipedia. Essentially 193 sovereign nations (with the exception of the Vatican) are members of the UN. I think Taiwan is not considered a sovereign state, though the people there seem to think otherwise. The whole New World Order conspiracy seems to focus on the Security Council which consists of five permanent members (US, UK, France, China and Russia) with ten non-permanent members (As of the Wikipedia article I checked they were: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Colombia, Gabon, Germany, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal,  and South Africa). I can’t find much of a structure in the UN that is just ten countries, just five and those haven’t changed in a long time. As an aside (and completely anecdotal), someone told me a few months ago Brazil was trying to get permanent membership on this council due to their relationship with middle eastern countries, but have been denied.

It also doesn’t give me the impression that there will necessarily be a one world government to speak of, just that there will be ten entities everyone in the world will bow to. Granted, these are probably nations, but they might be individuals, corporations, organizations or pretty well anything. Governments might just be the means to an end. This isn’t the generally agreed on interpretation but frankly, what is the difference between a multi-national corporation with half a million employees and a small country with a forty thousand citizens? It also doesn’t say that all nations will be included in these ten either, nor the one that overthrows them.

In This Case Are There Any Prophecies

Yes, as shown above there are prophecies in Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Matthew 24, and Revelations 17. These are really the same prophecy. Jesus gives some very specific things to watch out for in Matthew 24, and other parts of Revelations talk about these things in greater detail. I encourage everyone to read Revelations in general, actually.

Jesus’ Warnings

I thought it would be a good idea to list the warnings Jesus himself gave about this prophecy and what to look for. This is all taken from Matthew 24. He’s pretty concise.

1. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many – I take it to mean a lot of people will come claiming to be Jesus and fooling a lot of people in the process.
2. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet – There will be wars, and rumors of wars all the time. In this case he says to not worry about it because these things HAVE to happen but it isn’t the end time. A lot of preachers leave that part out.
3. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows - Nations will fight, there will be natural disasters in various places all over. Again, He says that this is just the beginning, it isn’t the end quite yet. Again, preachers leave this out a lot.
4. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake – He’s saying His followers will be turned in for bad things to happen to them, and we’ll be killed. We’ll be hated by all nations because of Him.
5. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another – I take this to mean a lot of strife. It’s hard to tell if this happens between believers or not. But there’s a lot of hate and betrayal that will go on. Some of this I take to be because of the wars and disasters He talks about previously (always need a scapegoat).
6. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many – So after or during all this, or perhaps before and after, there will be a lot of false prophets. Not people claiming to be God, but people claiming to be prophets (probably of various sorts).
7. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved - These two verses I am not sure exactly what they mean, but I think perhaps he’s saying a lot of people will become very jaded? If someone could send me a good interpretation of what He is trying to get across here I’d appreciate it.
8. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come – This is the point where He is saying, “OK THIS is how you tell when the end is. When the Gospel of the Kingdom has been preached to all the world.”

After this part Jesus tells us that when this starts to happen it would be best to run for the hills. Hide, don’t even get your stuff from your house first. Basically He is saying to evacuate with extreme prejudice. He then goes on to give a few more details of what things will be like and then says specifically that “Only the Father knows when he will come back.”

Is this something to worry about?

I don’t think so. My credentials in the field of theology are not that high (just most of my entire education revolved around it), but I recall all this prophecy to be a message of comfort. Jesus himself says that the world will hate us for His sake and we will be persecuted. It has happened before, happens now and will happen until the end of time. So we need a message of comfort. That message is “He’s coming back!” 1 Thessalonians 4 talks about how we are to conduct ourselves until the end happens, and some pretty good advice for life in general.

I cannot find anywhere that specifically says, “And verily, there will be a kingdom that encompasses the world. When this happens you’ll know that I’m coming back.” No, there is a prophecy that talks about world turmoil (granted some is political), war, disasters, and misery that will occur at the end of time. These things ARE coming, we don’t know when, but we’ve been given a detailed list of guidelines on what to look for. We should on some level welcome these things as soon we will realize the Kingdom of God, which is the only one world government the Bible does specifically allude to.

Is this even important? 

I think there’s a lot of concern for this one world government that is unwarranted. As I can’t find any specific references that clearly state there will be an evil one world government in the Bible, I can’t say that it is. It does talk about God’s kingdom on earth, which is a good thing. God ensured humanity would never get along at the Tower of Babel, and then gave us the hope that one day we would through Him. Only through Him is that possible. So I can’t bring myself to give this a lot of credibility.

I think this particular idea is very scary to Americans like me. A lot of us don’t have a love of government, or authority and the thought that some outside force could take away essential freedoms really speaks to us. We’re a country that was founded because of opposition to totalitarianism. Most Americans, even the extremely liberal ones, would obviously find a universal, totalitarian government to be frightening at least. Throw in some scriptural backing and you get a lot of upset Americans.

So no, I don’t think it is that important a thing to worry about. Also, Jesus himself warns against worry anyway. At any rate, He Himself says that the end will be there when the gospel of truth has been preached to all nations.

Is it plausible this could happen?

I think that the attempt at this without God is possible. I don’t think that mankind can actually unite mankind. In fact I think what these prophecies are talking about is how the people in this event are in fact NOT getting along in any sort of one world government. They are bowing down to the beast.

Should we try to stop it? I don’t know. Borders shift, nations fall, new ones take their place. It happens. Scary, but inevitable. Some might seek to change this but God’s Word says that it will fail until He has something to do with it.

What could trigger it?

All sorts of things could trigger a New World Order. Disasters for one could do it. Well meaning governments getting tired of war. The British Empire once decided slavery was wrong and pretty much ended the slave trade. It’s not that unlikely that a group of probably Western governments might actually get along for a while then decide they’ve just had it with oppression and human rights violations, and then just start systematically conquering everything that walks on two legs. Eastern governments might have the same idea too and do the same thing. This can happen. Rome attempted this on some level and established what we called the Pax Romana or “Roman Peace” which allowed the way for Jesus.

I think though that the phrase New World Order has been taken FAR out of context in its original meaning as well. I believe it was John F. Kennedy (he is given credit for nearly everything, ever) who said it first. What he was referring to was the way the world is structured is new. Not that the world will be under one order. A few other American presidents have used the term in a similar context. If you listen to the speeches they aren’t using it in a way that means “One world order” but more “new world structure”.

According to scripture, what should I do about it?

There’s really not much to do. If this happens, it will happen. Just pray and be faithful. Paul says that we should study in quiet, and work with our own hands. Basically mind your own business, keep your head down and study. Jesus gave some outlines on what to do when the end comes, but says little about a one world government to worry about. Jesus, nor Paul were anti-government. We’re to obey the laws of the land so far as they are not sinful. State sanctioned and mandatory rape obviously would be a bad law not to follow. He says to pay taxes, live as good citizens and do what is right.

Paul used the government of Rome to his advantage. He was a citizen of Rome, which was a big deal. He had rights to trial, to speak in the public square. The authorities held off a bunch of angry Jews for him once. And when it came time for his execution he exercised his right to a painless beheading, which was his right as a citizen of Rome. His fellow Jews would have thrown rocks at him until he died.

Should this one world government come about, do what Jesus and Paul did. Pay your taxes, obey the law, be a good citizen to the point where you are not violating scripture. Do exercise your rights. If this is a prophecy of the end of the world then Jesus will be coming back soon. We will be persecuted, we will be killed. That is going to happen, but don’t worry about what might happen.

Conspiracy Theory Project

So for the longest time I’ve had this weird hobby that people who know me pretty well are aware of. I like conspiracy theories, and I love to consume the media made by the people who come up with them or promote them. YouTube has some great stuff these days, and it is a lot better than the really crappy websites most of these guys have for themselves. You know the kind, dark background, bright yellow and purple font, one ten thousand foot long page crammed so full of text it is illegible. Basically they use the same site format that those people wanting to sell you miracle weight loss cream use, only more indecipherable.

Now personally I’m not a conspiracy theorist. When I was younger I kind of was, but mostly I was looking for some indication that there was more to reality then what most people saw. I was looking for real vampires, aliens, and shadowy conspiracy groups. The people with these conspiracy theories all seemed to know something I did not and I found it fascinating. I studied all kinds of occult stuff too, both on the net and from books at the library (when I could find them).

I didn’t really believe a lot of the stuff I read though, because I was raised in a Christian home, went to a Christian private school for my elementary school, and actually paid attention during Bible study. So as I would read this stuff I would consistently apply scripture to what I was reading and a lot of it just wouldn’t stand up against what the Bible says to be true. The things that match scripture were often taken far past its logical conclusion. This done by many people who claim to be believers in the Word of God.

What was more entertaining to me was the preachers, and special guests at my church that would parrot the same conspiracies, they just put new faces on them. They saw the devil in every detail. Evil was lurking around the corner, and this vast conspiracy was trying to bring about the end of the world, or at least Christian morals. Of course as a believer who actually paid attention I applied scripture to it and my reaction was, “Oh! Thank God!”.

I recently took to listening to some Skeptic podcasts after hearing this Brian Dunning guy on Geeks Guide to the Galaxy. He runs the awesome Skeptoid podcast. He takes apart a lot of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, urban legends, myths and other things purported to be true. The guy is an atheist but seems to be rather respectful of other people’s beliefs, which I appreciate. This is unusual as a fair number of skeptics are atheists as well and not particularly respectful of these things.

What I decided to do was take a stab at a few of these things myself for the benefit of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. This from the point of view of a believer and applying scripture as well as reason and logic to these conspiracy theories and other such things. What I’ve found is there is not a whole lot of contradiction between the biblical view and the more worldly skeptical view of a great many things.

So twelve things before the first post on the subject. These are my sort of ground rules for things I will and will not talk about.

1. I won’t talk about evolution vs. creation. I think this is far too complicated a topic to discuss with fallacies and outright liars on both sides. Personally I am a biblical creationist but I reject the idea that the earth is only six thousand years old.
2. I define scripture as anything within the canonical text of the Bible, that is the normal sixty six books you find in a standard King James Version. There are some Catholic Bibles that have a few extra chapters and might include the Apocrypha. I won’t use that as a reference because even the Catholic Church does not recognize some of that stuff as canonical and I’m not sure what all they actually do. Various other translations have some extra stuff, or omitted stuff and I’m not certain what those things are.
3. I will use either the King James Version of the Bible or the New King James Version of the Bible for my scripture references. The latter is my preferred version but a lot of very fundamental English speaking Christians will only accept the KJV as accurate. Since in the English speaking world few people reject the KJV as an accurate translation I’ll stick mostly to that. I find the NKJV has a few points in its favor for modern English and will make note when I use that and include the KJV verses for comparison. I will either type them in straight from the book, or use links to BibleGateway.com which has many varied translations and languages to look at for your convenience.
4. I will not use writings of various ancient saints and Christian philosophers as canonical references in the place of scripture. Their writing was not divinely inspired and do not always hold up to scripture itself. I also will not use apocryphal texts in the place of scripture either. I may however, reference either of these if applicable. For example a demonic hierarchy isn’t mentioned in scripture, but several monks and canonized saints have written books on this matter. That being said, these guys had a lot of good stuff to say, so I won’t disregard something just because it isn’t quoting directly from the Bible.
5. I will not use mythology as a stand in for scripture. It is true that some texts have similar, or nearly identical stories to biblical stories but they are not scripture, and will not be used as such. If it is not a credible historical text, scholarly work, or scripture portraying events that actually happened, I will assume they didn’t actually happen in reality. I don’t particularly care if archaeology has verified these events entirely as that science is pretty conservative and doesn’t always offer concrete conclusions. I will however try to make note of any relevant archaeological findings I come across.
6. I will use logic and reason in addition to scripture when taking apart some of these topics. It is foolish not to use the brains God gave us. Jesus Himself used reason in combination with scripture to get His point across to the masses. Think of His sermon on worrying if you are unsure. God is the Creator of the universe, He set the planets in motion and distanced them with logical repeating patterns. He made snail shells and fern leaves to exhibit the same patterns. His attributes include reason, and logic as well as love and grace.
7. I hold that the Bible is clear on which parts are metaphorical and which parts are literal recounting of events. I will endeavor to make this distinction as needed.
8. I will attempt to cite my references when available, whether this is a web page, or a book.
9. I do think Wikipedia is decent reference material and most of the articles I’ve ever read are fully cited so if something does contradict it, that information is easily available.
10. I will accept any corrections offered to my work. I try to moderate my comments for spam and all that so, if you do have a correction go ahead and comment on that page with the correction and I’ll update as soon as possible. I will of course try and research it to make sure the correction is indeed correct.
11. I will most definitely accept collaborative help. Since it is my blog I do reserve the right to choose who can and can’t help. I will say up front that you probably must either be a Christian (don’t particularly care what denomination), atheist or an agnostic of the more Christian persuasion to really help much. My thought is that I probably won’t get along much with other faiths (or lack thereof) since I’m rejecting any scripture other than the Bible as authoritative. I would assume most atheists or agnostics would not disagree with me much where logic and reason matches with scripture and vice versa as I am not using the Bible as my only historical reference.
12. This is not a means of me trying to prove any historical event as recorded in the Bible. This is only about applying Biblical principles to conspiracy theories and other such topics. I’m a firm believer that the Bible is accurate, and the inspired Word of God. This does not mean it is a scientific reference, nor a historical reference, though many of its books are indeed historical records. It is scripture, a guide on living your life, how to conduct yourself, and how to think.

I will stick to these twelve points, but I may add a few more along the way.