George Aar

I attended the main, public memorial for V.P. They had the bigtop set up and all. I don't remember if it was just a thing they did at the R.O.A. that year, or if it was a special event. Anyway, I remember B.G. Leonard being recognized from the main stage and him getting up and giving a brief wave to the crowd. I also remember Craig grousing about it later at a Corps meeting. "B.G. Leonard comes to town and all of you guys immediately start ....ing all over me and Dr. Wierwille!" or words to that effect. But, yeah, he was there. Seems like a civilized thing for him to do, but I wouldn't read much more than that into it...

Nah, that stuff never bothered me. But then, I left in '89, maybe a bit before they really got heavy with all the dire consequences that would befall anyone who dared use their brain. I had plenty of other stuff to occupy my mind though. Like, what would I do for work? (I left a staff position) What would I do for "twig" now? (yeah, I really wondered about that!), and where are we going to live? (we made an abortive move to Kalispell and were greeted with all the warmth of a case of the clap by the Wayfers that were there) and various and sundry other everyday crap. But, here it is almost 20 years later and looky how swell things worked out! Just another day in paradise!

Wouldn't it have been simpler to just have the car run over the drippy philosophy major instead? Win - win, no?

I can think of numerous instances of being the subject of some mindless "reproof" or another. Curiously, I think your response would have been perfectly appropriate for all of them as well... It was just a petty, small-minded, anal-retentive cult with a "feel-good" veneer and a dark core. It's hard to come to grips with maybe, because so many of us invested so much of ourselves in it, but it really was trivial and pointless, with no lasting legacy other than the bitterness of the former members who finally figured it out. And even that - fortunately - is temporal...

I had a '96 Taurus station wagon with the 3-liter v-6, automatic and all the bells and whistles. It was a GREAT car, till I let computer boy drive it. He managed to destroy it in just a little over 6 months, but I don't think that was the car's fault. It was compfy, reliable, and very nice to drive. I wish I had it back... (do keep after the serpentine belt, idlers and the cooling systems stuff though, it all works fine when it works, but causes real havoc if you let it go)

These tactics work equally well for the Ultimate Authority Figure, the Almighty Hisself (especially #5). Yeah, I know, I'm not 'sposed to mention it...

No problemo. I don't think they're telling the whole story though. I think a lot of the ease with which we could read through the paragraph was due to context and normal sentence structure. I've gotta hunch that if they were describing molecular varibility of radioactive isotopes or somesuch, that our comprehension would be dramatically reduced...

Well, actually I was hoping to just make a smarta$$ remark and let it go at that. But, if you insist, Wierwille, like Norman Vincent Peale, and Og Mandino and a whole host of other variously-talented salesmen and hucksters drew a great deal of their dogma from the common logic of the fringe psycho-babble crowd of the day. Jung and some other big-name Shrinks (whose names escape me at the moment0 were real big on the "power" of thinking this or that, with all sorts of mystical overtones. Wierwille - as was his norm - was plowing fields someone else had already tilled with his magical solution to all of life's problems - BELIEVE! He just gave the psychobabble a bit more of a religious tone. While in the more traditional Christian church, we're taught that God will answer our prayers if we just do it "right". What that "right" way is, tends to be a very mobile target though. And all the basic tenets of the faith - the virgin birth, God's offspring living amongst men, the sinless perfect man, the human sacrifice - all of that - have been around since the dawn of time in numerous cultures, describing a whole plethora of different gods and religious beliefs. And - even though we have virtually no evidence that anything The Bible says is true or "God's Word", we still zealously adhere to it as if there couldn't be any doubt as to it's veracity. When, in actuality, when it comes to real proof, we got nuttin'...

"I'm still fuzzy as to the distinction between twi's believing and true Christian faith, if there is one. Please don't stop this thread." TWI's "believing" was a superstitious tenet based - primarily - on bogus '50s vintage pop-psychology. "True Christian faith" is based on ancient, more widely accepted superstition...

The most disturbing thing I saw in the program was the people who STILL, even after losing their whole families, their homes, their savings, their whole life, even after all that, here some 30 years after the fact, they're STILL making excuses for it and waxing nostalgic about how good it could have been - if only... Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what is it about cultthink that is so hard to shake? The People's Temple was an insane joke, as was (is) WayWorld, Scientology, The Moonies, the JWs, all of it. It's all a perverse waste of humanity...

If memory serves me, this is in direct contradiction of what Wierwille claimed. Didn't he take all of his theological works to the "Gehenna" and dump them and then start "working The WURD"? Why, he'd had an ultimatum from The Almighty Hisself. Wierwille was to no longer "Read around THE WURD", but to study directly from it. Then GAWD showed him all sorts of magical principles that hadn't been known since the FIRST CENTURY! Geeze Pete, it was a simple scam fer Chrissake. Wierwille the conman sold a bunch of idealistic kids a big gob of snakeoil. It earned him a pretty good paycheck for a few years and the adulation of a small mass of credulous - if otherwise well-meaning - SUCKERS. It all came to nought, that should tell you something.

Rascal, It wasn't an "entire W.O.W. family", it was just one. But then, one is plenty when we're talking murder, ain't it? It happened in Alexander City, Al. in 1979 or early'80 (memory gets a bit hazy now). It was only a few miles from where I was sent, but I only found out about it after a few beers with a branch leader, and the alcohol started talking. Nobody was supposed to know. The Corps "Branch leader" (a serious whackjob from what I could tell) got in an argument with one of his W.O.W.s and settled it the old fashioned way - and shot him dead. The W.O.W. went home in a pine box and the BL didn't go home at all. He was still in an Alabama prison last I heard...

Damn! It's coming up again so soon? I was late for the last one too!

I don't know for sure, but if I had to guess, I'd bet that whoever wrote that particular passage of scripture wasn't a wealthy man - at least in his own eyes...

Dannny said: "Lets get real- Christians will never reach a consensus on such "basics" as the state of the dead, or how many crucifed, of the infallibility of super holy books, or how many demons it takes to dance on the eyeball of a chalatan, or how many gods it takes to fit into your toaster, - in the grand scheme of things, it all seems such piddly nonsense." Indeed. "But what if we all agreed to disagree, and to live by "Love your neighbor as your own self", and even "love your enemies"? Far be it from me to get all touchy-feely, but you might have something there. I don't think the "let's kill everybody who doesn't agree with us" mantra is getting us anywhere...

Of course once you "educate yourself" you'll start believing the way Sunesis does, isn't that obvious? How could you be so dumb?

I don't have any problem imagining Paul as simply a early-day version of VPW, or Jimmy Swaggert, or Billy Sunday. How could we know any different? Is it that it happened so long ago it MUST be true? He couldn't have been just another narcissistic flim-flam man, after all, it was CENTURIES ago! What do we use for verification of "real" acts of God or "real" men of God as opposed to phony ones? Geeze, it seems to me that any explanation becomes so subjective as to be meaningless to anyone other than the indiviual giving it. But, YMMV. Personally I found it very difficult to "believe" without abandoning reason to a great extent. Eventually, I guess I got tired of extending myself that much... (And Clay, as usual, I have little or no idea of what you're talking about)

Well I'm appalled. Being a long time orthodox agnostic I'm shocked to discover that Sushi has joined the ranks of the heretics!

I've always thought it odd how sheer age alone can lend credibility to an otherwise flakey bunch of yarns. If the Bible or the Quran or the sayings of Buddha were written a few weeks ago, I wonder how much devotion they'd garner? Not much is my bet...

On the contrary, I think the real winners are the ones who realize it's all B.S. and finally set about living their own lives, without the burden of trying to please M.O.G.s, mini-M.O.G.s, or the current God-on-a-stick...

It makes me question the wisdom of the creation of God...

For the life of me I couldn't remember the term we had for it 'round Seattle. Then it struck me, "Hooky-bobbing". Yeah, we used to do that whenever there was enough compact snow on the roads. Usually accompanied with a bottle of Boone's Farm. Switching hands to pass the bottle took a little practice. Lord have mercy, why aren't we all dead already?

And you don't think he knows how to pronounce his own name either John? I'm not much impressed with anyone who's convinced that The Bible is some sort of inerrant answer book, but at least Dr. Juedes was pretty thorough in documenting the Vickster's blatant plagiarism and poor scholarship. That's worth something, especially to those that have never questioned WayWorld dogma...

When I "set it aside" do I keep it refrigerated or just leave it at room temperature? (actually, this time of year it won't make a helluva lot of difference, as room temperature is about 40 degrees or so in my house)

I'm a slow cooker, but I eat really fast - does that make up for it?