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Almost thou persuadest me to be an atheist

You know, it is possible John might answer questions about his paper and what happened way back when if any of you ask him. Here's the website contact page to reach him and his organization: Connect With Us | Spirit & Truth

I was going out WOW and on our way to Amarillo I flipped into a manic psychotic episode and they put me on a bus. I got off the bus in Oklahoma City and was acting crazy and the police picked me up and put me in jail. A warden took it upon herself to look into my purse and fortunately my parents’ address and phone number were in it. (They had moved) and she contacted my dad who flew to OKC and took me home. Without these “fortunate” occurrences God only knows what would have become of me. It’s only because God took care of me not TWI. By the way, I didn’t really want to go WOW in the first place but was pressured into it by my twig leader. I’m bipolar but was undiagnosed at the time.

If anyone wants to read my first-hand account of being on staff at HQ and talking with John right after he was fired, it's in Undertow, Chapter 54: Clampdown. I got his permission to use his real name in my book.

I was born and raised as a Roman Catholic, and attended their schools. I bought into their belief’s and even thought of becoming a priest, in other words I was sold on their doctrine. UNTIL the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Prior to this no Catholic could eat meat on Friday, and if they did it was a mortal sin. A mortal sin would send you to hell if you did not confess the sin to a priest. So if a Catholic was to eat a bologna sandwich for lunch on any Friday, and on the way home they were killed in a motor vehicle accident, their soul would immediately be damned to hell for eternity. Pretty severe for sure and not very comforting for their surviving Catholic family. Then, the Second Vatican Council decreed that eating meat on Friday, except for Lent, was no longer a mortal sin. In other words, you can eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, and rib steak for dinner, and no longer commit a mortal sin. How in the name of fairness and common sense, could a loving God cast his children into everlasting hell for eating meat on Friday prior to the Second Vatican Council, and not post Second Vatican Council? That opened my eyes to the ridiculousness of this teaching and started me on a very long journey realizing that trying to explain a loving God was also ridiculous. There are several thousand Christian religions that all disagree on how to obtain eternal life. Plus all the other world religions all have their way of salvation. If you can’t prove one is tight then all must be wrong.

I have a first hand recollection of him teaching that masturbation was the original sin. That's not an event you casually forget.

This is getting obnoxious

Our Unwritten Seoul

Parables, from what I can see, are each meant to make a single, specific point, in a manner that almost anyone could understand it, and that's it. They are not meant to dissect in fine detail for doctrine- except possibly for the single, specific point. The parable in question is rather pointedly about forgiveness. So, in the parable, the framing story shows a person in prison until a debt is paid. As a basis for doctrine, that's missing the mark (to put it nicely.) Shame on JS if he couldn't just see that immediately, let alone catch it on a later read. As I see it, for him to miss something that obvious means he didn't WANT to see it, and was busy trying to justify something he wanted to see, even if he had to torture the verses to PRETEND that's what they said. Right now, it makes no sense to me for a punishment to be more suffering and THEN annihilation. I'll have to look over the 9 verses and see if, somehow, it makes sense to me afterwards.

Quantitative: countable. We have a soul. One. It's a thing. Not part of our imagination. Immeasurable: it doesn't have weight or mass. There's nothing about a soul that science can point to, independent of the body, in order to demonstrate its presence. It might be easier if I asked you what a soul is, independent of the body. I'm suggesting that St. Thomas Quinas' meditations on the soul carry no more weight in the real world than George Lucas' notes on how The Force works. (If you can think of a polite way for me to say that, I'm all ears)

If you wonder why and how I came to write my memoir, Undertow, this blog post I wrote some years ago answers that question: Dear Rachel: This is How | Charlene L. Edge

Three agents. Each following the god of Abraham. Each having their own scriptures upon which they justify violent suffering. Did I fix it?

That's fair. Each of the studies cited in the article acknowledge that very young children have an innate, intuitive, pro social moral sensibility. The article recognizes that children's moral sense is further developed through experience and even indoctrination. I should point out the careful word choice of "developed" leaves open the possibility moral sensibility is not necessarily improved.

Want to know what the glove looks like, what it’s made of, how it fits? Want to know where in your imagination to look for that yet undiscovered manuscript? Want to know how to MAKE something fit that doesn’t fit? There’s a Bible version for that.

Why would God need a witness?

How's about some Saturday Night Blues?

Objective

Thank you. If I am less than respectful in responding to your questions, please call me out on it.

I have no problem believing there is no karma.

And for the non-believer, it's difficult to believe there is no karma. But here's the thing. If you make a habit out of blowing through red lights on a regular basis, there's a pretty good chance you're going to get T-boned someday. It's not karma, it's just the laws of statistics catching up with you. It's not a punishment from God. It's not a tit for a tat or an eye for an elbow. It's just a way to cope with the sometimes harsh realities of this world.

Sin is a real religious construct. Sin is a real religious concept. The concept doesn't exist outside a religious framework..

Does anyone know TWI's current position on this issue? How do they explain the firing of John Schoenheit for rightly dividing the word on adultery? Surely, they don't dispute the thesis of his paper. EDIT: JuniorCorps wasn't alone in leaving over this issue. How does TWI defend against this legitimate reason. They must be prepared. After all, those postcards about "coming home" were sent to former dupes they must know left because for this very reason.

That's where vpw's cadre of sin came in. First, they procure the victim and get them to go to him in private. Afterwards, one of them "coincidentally" ran into her as she left, trying to make sense of what happened. This exit counselor, so to speak, can tell her how she was privileged and so on, and watch her for signs of exploding. If she seemed ready to spill the beans on having been raped/sexually assaulted, then the exit counselor passed word. Quickly, she's announced as unworthy in some way and kicked off grounds. This attacks her self-esteem while she's trying to make sense of things, and let's some innocent people possibly see she was kicked out for supposedly some weakness on her part (kept vague, of course.) She's immediately put on a nice, slow bus. That's really cheap, and since they're in the middle of nowhere, it will take her a day to reach home if she is close, dayS if she is not. That gives the twi propaganda machine lots of time to contact all the leadership in the person's home area and destroy her reputation. That way, if she says something to them, they've already "poisoned the well." Furthermore, it isolates her further, damaging her self-esteem even more. Any time someone was any kind of liability, twi shoved them on a bus. Sometimes it meant a person took a WEEK to get home, because they were in no shape to go home alone, and got lost somewhere in the US. That happened a few times. lcm documented vpw doing it in his book "VP and Me." (We discussed that in the thread "VP and Me in Wonderland.") A man in residence evidenced some sort of event- he was incoherent. Any normal place- where having a fiduciary responsibility to care for people they accepted responsibility for- would have had him taken to a hospital and evaluated. What did vpw do? He CONFRONTED the man! As if this was a sane response. Then he sent the man home on a bus. lcm worried about the man getting home, but vpw told him to stop worrying and the man would get home. A WEEK later, he turned up at home. That's the most anyone at twi knew about what happened to the man. He showed up at home a WEEK later. I wish we had details about his ordeal, and about what medical situation had happened. Was it acute malnutrition or sleep deprivation? Was it some undiagnosed brain condition? Was it something else? We'll never know, and vpw never cared. We know at least one woman got sent home (IIRC, after getting raped hitchhiking on LEAD when she was sent alone on someone's vehicle) and she was a mess psychologically when she left. Nobody cared. She was in no shape to take care of her connections, and she got lost somewhere in the US. Several days later, she made it home.

That's where the reasons given in the Appendices come in. What should have been so obvious became overshadowed by deceit, lies and powerful positions in twi.

I should… I mean, I want to… I just can’t… People still call this schmuck “Dr.” Even John Schoenheit does. WITAF!?!

Space Oddity "Four, three, two, one, earth below us"

"Like their leader VP, men (and some women) used those reasons above to get what they wanted leaving behind darkness and brokenness. " Now, now, "credit" where "credit" is due. (Or, possibly give "the devil" his due.) That sounded almost coincidental that vpw and some of his cadre likewise did those evil deeds. Let's be more specific, and more honest, about it. vpw was the originator. He set about to commit such sinful, criminal, and evil actions. Although it's possible that someone may have been interested in the cadre because of that, more likely they were all brought in the way lcm was brought in. vpw groomed lcm to commit those kinds of things. He told him all kinds of things, some of which we've heard. He told him- on the subject of fidelity in marriage- that the married lcm "was going to have to loosen up on those sorts of things if he wants to lead God's people." Since vpw had previously convinced lcm that vpw had an inside track on what God Almighty thought and wanted, that left lcm trying to accept that God Almighty wanted him to cheat on his own wife. And so on. vpw set up his network to target women, and when he set up that network, he groomed a number of people around him to accept or embrace that kind of thinking. That's why they were willing to help vpw rape and molest and drug the women that he did those things to. I mean, it wasn't a one-night, one conversation thing, he spent months carefully grooming and indoctrinating his inner circle so that there was a network of people close to him that would accept that and help him. Not everyone was indoctrinated this way. vpw worked hard at this, possibly harder than at anything else he did. He would find a moment to talk to only one person. He would make a small comment to them, and monitor their reaction. If they reacted in a godly fashion, he backed off and didn't bring it up again. We saw that with J1m D00p. When vpw spoke to him alone in a car, vpw tried to tell him that God Almighty was fine with orgies. J1m was resistant and revolted by the suggestion, and later convinced himself that, somehow, he misunderstood what happened, that he couldn't possibly have heard vpw say what he had heard vpw say. After that, vpw fine-tuned his approach. That was too heavy-handed and abrupt. So, he made smaller comments, less abrupt. He changed the "temperature" around him, so that discussions about sex weren't quite so out of place. Then he could make a single comment and dismiss it later as a misunderstanding if it went awry. AFAIK, Ralph D never recounted such an incident... and I doubt he was left out. I think he was approached like everyone else, but when vpw baited the hook, RD didn't take the bait- he wasn't immoral and wasn't going to be. So, vpw just dropped a passing comment and went about his business- but made a mental note to keep RD well away from the thick of things, and not to approach RD again. Over time, vpw had a list of people around him who were receptive and groomed- every time, a little further, a little further. He also had a list of people to keep clear of his sex maniac operation- people who could spoil things and ruin his well-organized sin machine after all the trouble he went through to set it up. But they had their uses also- mainly, their clean-cut natures were "evidence" that nothing untoward could be happening around vpw. After all, in public, he said nothing in favor of it, and there were moral, godly people around him, so they would have blown the whistle on him. So, yes, the comments in the appendices started with vpw. As with anything else in twi, some people just parroted his phrases without ever stopping to question whether or not they were correct, godly or right- or to think at all, for that matter. Whenever we saw multiple people parroting the same error-ridden sentences, it was as good as having vpw's initials or signature on the phrase, endorsing and recommending it all around.

Like their leader VP, men (and some women) used those reasons above to get what they wanted leaving behind darkness and brokenness. I saw the darkness, I saw the darkness No more safety, no more light Now I’m so shameful, no trusting in sight Thanks to him, I saw the darkness

Since we're off-topic anyway, a brief link. Someone asked about the contents of Schoenheit's anti-adultery paper, the one that got him fired for writing. It's still readable in the link in the "Greasespot Cafe Document and Audio Files" thread. The link to that Adultery paper is https://web.archive.org/web/20030219041757/http://greasespotcafe.com/waydale/misc/adultery.htm You can read, or reread, it for yourself.

I would like to request some caution here: the topic of this thread is questioning TWI doctrine, but if we start getting into arguments for and against the reality of claimed supernatural experience, I am concerned the discussion will no longer be "About the Way" and would instead fall rightly under "Matters of Faith." I'm trying to head this off now because I don't want people to come back later and say "why did you let so and so atheist say this and not let the Christian say that?"

Probably it would be freeing. By the time I started raising children I was already involved with TWI, so all my adopted and biological children grew up with TWI doctrine. However, despite being mostly Waybrained, I tried to encourage my children to think and come to logical conclusions. It took with some of them, but not with others! By the time I remarried and was raising a stepdaughter, my wife and I didn't attempt to indoctrinate her in anything. She still managed to catch the Christianity bug through friends, got baptized while she was in Air Force basic training, and still considers herself a nondenominational, generic Christian, although I doubt she cares about doctrinal specifics. Of my children with my first wife, none have stayed with TWI. One son is an atheist, another might be, but doesn't claim the label. My daughter considers herself Catholic, but doesn't really participate. The others never talk about it. My granddaughters are raised by parents who would probably not identify as atheists, but are not involved in any church and to my knowledge never talk about religion. One of the girls told my wife that she doesn't believe in any gods. They're probably the closest in my extended family who I would consider having been raised atheist -- more like raised doctrinally neutral

I like Gervais' approach. He doesn't try to beat people over the head with atheism, or even try to convince anyone, he just states that it's the conclusion that he came to.

Mmmph I am reminded of that book on ectoplasm and other such phenomena that TWI used to “study.” Wasn’t it published by American Christian Press, but later victor distanced himself from it? Someone will know what I’m talking about. A mind is a terrible thing to lose - only so much room for bullshonta.

You can find more stories like this throughout the board, if you’re interested. WW summarized it all very well, but I suspect many still miss a critical point he makes. WW: vpw taught lcm. Among the things he taught him was that lcm was going to have to "loosen up" on the subject of sex and sex acts with women other than his wife if he wanted to lead God's people. He convinced lcm that vpw was the real thing. So, when lcm did things vpw did, lcm believed they were OK with God Almighty, so he didn't cover his tracks so much..which is why he got caught. There are accounts here witnessing lcm as a meek and diligent seeker before victor got to him. Idk, but it’s been said. It’s easy to blame lcm. He deserves it. But there is no lcm without vpw. Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. All the wickedness and destruction goes back to the original, victor. All. Of. It.

Between the 88 and 89 ROA, lcm drew his line in the sand. vpw used to take people in isolation on grounds, and occasionally threaten to kick them out for incompetence unless they swore an oath of allegiance to him. He pulled this privately and in quiet because vpw knew it was wrong. vpw taught lcm. Among the things he taught him was that lcm was going to have to "loosen up" on the subject of sex and sex acts with women other than his wife if he wanted to lead God's people. He convinced lcm that vpw was the real thing. So, when lcm did things vpw did, lcm believed they were OK with God Almighty, so he didn't cover his tracks so much..which is why he got caught. So, 1985 was "Passing of the Patriarch." For a few years, lcm wandered the grounds in a fog (according to him.) After that (1988), lcm drew his line in the sand. He contacted ALL the twi leaders above twig level. He demanded an oath of allegiance to him PERSONALLY. We know this because one of our posters got this message, and phoned lcm directly. He said it sounded like lcm was saying they all had to follow him BLINDLY (his emphasis, not mine.) lcm claimed that was what he was already doing. "If that's what you really think, you can kiss my @$$$" *hangs up* lcm demanded that everyone choose between himself and Geer. Most leaders said they refused to choose among men, and/or said they chose to stand with God, period. So, lcm fired all of them. In one fell swoop, 80% of all the leaders in twi were fired, and letters were sent to everyone with the names of everyone in their state who was canned, and saying they were canned for following their lusts and so on. When that happened, the people- who knew the locals but didn't know lcm- stuck with their local leaders rather than lcm. Since lcm kicked them all out simultaneously, he made it convenient for them to associate with each other. In different places, at least for a time, the locals all split from twi as a group. At ROA 89, attendance was 20% what it had been at ROA 88. Immediately following ROA 89, some of the people who attended left. (Like me-I was there to buy out the bookstore, to observe things for myself to make informed decisions, and to be on-site if, somehow, lcm got sensible and started fixing things. As for the splits, 20% stayed with lcm, 80% left. I summarized the split around the time by saying that the love left, and the fire stayed. So, the compassionate people were out, and none were to be found in twi after that, when you returned. What was left was people who were willing to be loyal even if it was not sensible to do so. So, people running on lots of conviction- the fire. So, that's why twi seemed so different from ROA 90 onward (until lcm called off the ROAs.)

The GSC is not a "Christians only" or a "Christian=specific" forum. Everyone is welcome to post, regardless of position, beliefs, and where they are in their life. That having been said, not everything is welcome to be posted. It's not acceptable to dump insults on posters just because they're Christians, and it's not acceptable to dump insults on posters just because they're NOT Christians. So, no slams just because people are atheists or agnostics (which doesn't mean everyone else is free game for insults.) You have choices. Either refrain from posts like that, or just admit you can't control yourself and go elsewhere to post. You can always make your own message board and post whatever you'd like on it. The other possibility is to disregard the GSC rules and common manners and lay into people without restriction. Of course, that means that the Moderators are going to have to take action. Those who can't control themselves will require others adding control to them. That's true just about everywhere. Naturally, you can ignore my post or make fun of it, but a word to the wise is sufficient.

This opens up a whole lot of other questions for me like, does God work with unbelievers as well. Maybe the whole rap of "the fruit of the spirit comes from the manifestations" is bogus. QUESTION for the group: did VPW make that up or did he copy it from elsewhere... Stiles, Leonard, or somebody else?

After watching many episodes of "The Practice" and enjoying it immensely, I have to admit, "It's Possible".

You should care DEEPLY about the plagiarism. Not only is it illegal, unethical and slothful, large portions of what he plagiarized have been shown to be inaccurate.

Do you know enough atheists to come to a statistically valid conclusion that they are without joy? But extremely without joy...

I take exception to this. Those of us who believe there's nothing after this life have EVERY reason to live. What we lack is a reason to DIE. By which I mean, we can understand the value of sacrifice as well as the next patriot (there ARE, in fact, atheists in foxholes), but we understand that sacrifice as being for other people, not for reward.

1. "Sadly, I cannot get this man to accept the notion that the Bible really is the word of God." Ok, let's start there. The Bible never calls itself the Word of God. That's part of the problem right there. The Bible speaks of the Word of God quite often, but it never has the self-awareness to declare itself to be that Word. Maybe, just maybe, you can be wrong about the Bible being the Word of God and still be a good Christian. 2. "I think he would like it to be..." Well, no one asked you what you think, did they? Maybe he has no preference one way or another and is just waiting for you to make a plausible case for your thesis. 3. "... but is overly obstinate and has an awful attitude towards God and his plan for man's redemption." A lot to unpack there. Has it occurred to you that maybe YOU're the one being "obstinate" with an "attitude" that won't budge no matter how many facts he presents to counter your preconceived notion that the Bible is the Word of God? Like, maybe YOU're the stubborn one, not him? Because he shows you the Bible, and you start making excuses. Oh, that's the Old Testament. God's different now. He's really kind and gentle. He did what he did before because he HAD to to fulfill the plan of redemption. Problem: The plan of redemption is only the plan of redemption because God wanted it that way. It didn't have to be. He could just accept an apology without shrugging his shoulders and saying oh well because someone found a particular fruit of a particular tree to yummy to pass up (He also could have put that tree ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET but instead put it right in front of two people who did not know good and evil; then said don't eat from that tree. Not exactly a strong case for omniscience. It's like I put a cookie on the table in front of my 7-year-old and said "Don't eat that," then walked out of the room. He's gonna eat the cookie. I'm not all knowing, and I know that). So your friend, I submit, is not stubborn. Rather, he's amused at the contortions you'll twist yourself into to deny what's obviously written. There IS not idiom of permission in the Bible. Bullinger, for what he's worth, appears to be the only one who makes an issue of it. It's hardly a scholarly consensus. The existence of other figures of speech does not verify the "idiom of permission" as something the Bible employs on a regular basis. It is, however, an extraordinarily convenient tool for believers to employ whenever their holy book shows God doing what no good God would ever do, even though the book is unambiguous about it being God who did it. But that's just the old testament. Unless, of course, you're holding back tithes from the apostles in Acts, which is New Testament. (Oh, but it doesn't say God did that. It was Satan -- even though the Bible doesn't say THAT either). The Bible is filled with examples of God saying he'll do something and then saying He did it. It doesn't say he allowed it to happen or he allowed Satan to do it. It says HE did it. Now, it COULD have said he allowed Satan to do it, very easily. Look at Job. Satan did those things. It says so. Yeah, he got God's permission, but it says that, clearly. There's no ambiguity, and there's no "this is how it works normally." A figure of speech is supposed to be a statement that is true in essence though not literally true. "It's raining cats and dogs" is a figure of speech. "This car can stop on a dime" is a figure of speech. A figure of speech is not supposed to be a way for you to get the Bible to say the opposite of what it clearly says just because what it clearly says is inconvenient for your theology. God ordered the execution of a man for picking up sticks on the sabbath. He didn't give man permission to kill the offending sabbath breaker. He gave man an order -- cast those stones! God didn't allow divorce. He prescribed it. He didn't allow Satan to kill all the firstborn of Egypt. He had it done. And he DID have a choice. When my kid offends me, I have a choice how to discipline him. You have no idea how many times my discipline has stopped short of killing him because he did his chores between sunset on Friday night and Saturday night! So here's a thought. Bear with me: Maybe your friend isn't the stubborn one in this equation. Maybe he's not the one being inflexible. Maybe, just maybe, he's given this far more thought than you have.

Never thought about how wierd it is. You are not emotionally scarred are you? :)

Whoops-that is correct, sir! To be specific, he also said Leonard was good with experiences (and vpw derided experience often) but not with The Word. And H1ggins supposedly gave him his Bullinger stuff: "he writes like you teach."

I agree with Kit...watch what you post. During my divorce and custody dispute, my lawyer cautioned me about talking, emailing, posting, etc... about the case while it is in progress. ANY KIND of statments made by me could be used in court against me. And in ANY kind of court battle, whether it be civil, family, or criminal...it's just not worth taking chances. The internet is a public forum, and as such, can be accessed by anyone for any reason. That alone should scream caution to those involved in any sort of legal action.