George Aar

Gee, only 8 posts and we've already devolved to "I know you are but what am I?". Is this a new record?

I've only read through an article of his and perused his site a little, but I think I get the general drift. My main question would be: Why cleave to Christianity at all? He doesn't seem to spend an awful lot of time trying to make biblical proofs from scripture or draw lessons from the Bible as to how to act today. He strikes me as a rather typical Unitarian. Given that there is scant evidence that there ever even was a man named "Jesus of Nazareth" that performed wonderful miracles and made a couple of feel-good sermons, doesn't some attempt to "follow" after him and try to imitate his actions ring just a little bit hollow?(WWJD?) Why the pretense of "Christianity" at all? Why not just formulate a workable philosophy from the voluminous amount of treatises (sp?) that are available? Or, better yet, figure out a workable system of ethics for yourself? The idea that a cobbled together volume of disparate stories and laws, put together by a bunch of superstitious geeks of the 4th century (an age noted for it's enlightenment?) should somehow command our unquestioned obeisance, strikes me as way more than absurd. Just what is it about THE BIBLE that commands respect and veneration anyway? Is it really that compelling a work? Viewed from a little more substantial of a distance than I had in WayWorld, I would say "no"...

It seems a shame that what I would consider "common sense" would even have to be voiced as if it's an edgey, controversial opinion. But such is the state of our current political culture, I guess. Kinda reminds me of the paranoid, conformist '50s. And then there was the over-reaction to that period in the '60s. I wonder what the reaction is going to be to the self-righteous, religious right's hegemony in another 6 or 8 years?

Well, from what I can tell Sears peaked out in about 1950 and K-mart just a few years after that. Just go into a Sears and look around. It's like going into a time machine - it's still 1950 in there. They still have the great-big-store-in-the-Mall kinda concept. Still have the cheezy "Kenmore" appliances and power tools (actually custom labeled by Black and Decker and GE and some no-name manufacturers), and still have all the same features they've had since Hoagey was a pup. The tool department (sorry Socks, I think they're crap), the auto repair, the clothes (tres chic), and the appliance department. They did a little to stave off bankruptcy. The "Sears Brand Central" idea and the "Discover" card helped keep them on the map, but it seems they still have a bunch of dinosaurs figuring out their business plan. They've been in steady decline overall for decades. And K-mart, gaaaawd they're just awful. I remember several years ago going into one just to get a battery for my watch or something or other. I looked around the place and thought, "If they were giving all of this stuff away for free, I still wouldn't want any of it". It was all just so much crap. Buy it, take it outside, and throw it right in the dumpster, and save the trip home. IMHO, they need to do a serious rethinking and retooling of their whole operation from the ground up and make some drastic changes. But, as it seems they still have the same goons in charge, I don't see it happening. It's going to be a long, painful death by degrees.

They also have no other approved outlet for their ambitions. Like Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and probably several other church groups, the religious prohibitions against all the normal vices, philandering, gambling, drinking, etc. are so emphatic - and the perceived consequences so dire - that the normal, everday, wild, headstrong, young man has only business in which to channel his energies, that is, without carrying around a huge load of guilt. The "iniquities of the world" are prohibited and derided in the strongest manner with the most dire of consequences and, meanwhile, success in business is still lauded. So they "rebel" in the only way they can - they succeed. I guess there's a lesson in there somewhere...

Misery loves company, I guess. Both of the stores are yesterday's news. I think the merger is only delaying the inevitable.

Only feed your favorite children.

I dunno, I'm all for "you're as young as you feel" kinda sentiments, but she's bringing another party into this. After a certain point isn't it just unfair to the child to have it? I mean, by the time this woman's child is old enough to be going to soccer games or little league, this mother is going to be spending an inordinate amount of time at the drugstore, the doctor's office, and in a rocking chair. Is that fair for the kid? When a person is - without question - going to be slowing down considerably due to aging, the offspring is going to be running around and getting into all sorts of stuff. Is mom going to be able to cope? I think it's tremendous selfish and uncaring to conceive at that late a date, for a mother or father.

But Evan, you've still got to have the PFAL secret decoder ring.

"they have no cause of death, they have no evidence at all. the case was tried on circumstance ONLY." I've got to take issue with that a little bit. Circumstantial evidence is evidence. And it's not necessarily inferior, lesser evidence. It's just circumstantial. To use the old shop-worn example that first-year law students all trot out, If you go to bed at night and notice that it's a beautiful, moonlit evening and the lawn and the yard are bare and dry, and then wake up in the morning to find 2 feet of snow in the yard, you might assume that it had, in fact, snowed during the night. That's circumstantial evidence. No eyewitnesses, no meteorological surveys, just the circumstances that you're made aware of. The evidence that I've heard in regards to the case, though all circumstantial, to me was pretty damning. I think they've made the right call.

"Get over it and move on." Yeah, everything's just fine folks. Nothing to see here. Move along...

"i don't know maybe the home shopping network" I'm concerned that they might try to revive "The Ice Capades". Oh, the humanity!

Lifted up, I don't think you're understanding me yet. I have no doubt that Linda and Ex10th remember those incidents exactly as they're retelling them. I also don't doubt that they have long since lost any desire to promote The Vickster or his cult. But I think they do hang on to the (mistaken - IMHO) notion that "miracles" of healing can and do take place. They carry that belief around with them, and, given the right circumstances, will point to incidents and say "See, what'd I tell ya?" Given that we were all looking for evidence to back up our beliefs, I wouldn't find it the least bit remarkable that maybe what really happened had more to do with their desire to see mircales happen and then add in a little "confirmation bias", "selective thinking", and wrap it all up with a heaping dose of "ad hoc hypothosis" and Voila! another "miracle". And no doubt, the story gets better with each retelling (or I am the only one?). Doesn't it ever make you wonder that really dramatic, unfakeable healings NEVER happen to anyone you know? I mean stuff like, a confirmed dead person, cold in a morgue, getting raised from the dead, or an amputee growing a new limb back, a deaf/mute really receiving his hearing (no cochlear implants or hearing aids, a fer-real spurchal healing), or someone who's really blind getting his sight back? Why it takes just as much believing to heal that cold sore as it does to raise the dead, now don't it?

"Of course the healing was real. And of course God did the healing" Well, of course...

" Do you not believe their accounts?" I believe their perception of their accounts. What we don't know is what really happened. How long does it take a cold sore to heal? Did it really heal up completely or was it only not as noticeable? And how bad were all the other injuries or maladies that people have spoken of? Do they have before and after x-rays? Lab results of blood tests before and after? I've had injuries that seemed debilitating at the time of the accident, an ankle so sore I couldn't put any weight on it, a shoulder so sore I couldn't raise my arm, etc, only to find out just a little time later, that the pain was vastly reduced or gone altogether. Such was even the case with the Red Sox pitcher last week. He couldn't get out of bed on the morning of the game, and while driving in to the ball park saw all the signs of encouragement from the devoted fans. He got to the park and realized he felt well enough to play, and won the game. I've OFTEN gotten out of bed feeling so sick I was just cetain I had a horrendous day ahead of me, yet a few hours later, after sucking it up and just going to work, I felt fine. And Wierwille was no where around for either of us. Maybe we're all healed all the time (though somewhat capriciously) by the Almighty. I don't tend to believe any of that sort of stuff as it would neccessitate the abandoning all of the known laws of physics, but then, YMMV...

" it was that some, such as George, who posted after these testimonies were given, do not want to acknowledge that any real healings occurred." I'd be happy to acknowledge them. Just show me some proof. Looky, we ALL heard of all sorts of miraculous goings-on all around us in WayWorld. I heard of people growing new legs, regaining their sight, even the dead being raised. Wonderful! Praise God! Glory, HALLELUYAH! But what we NEVER got was ANY proof WHATSOEVER. Thousands of years of "testimonies" of the great works of the Almighty, but not one shred of proof! Nothing! Only emotional testimonies (and probably more than a few outright lies). Why is Almighty God always sooooooo inscrutable? Doesn't He want His works known? Wouldn't he like to have people believe in Him? Ah, but there's a catch. God only likes gullible people. Skeptics and analytical types need not apply. It was all a shabby, two-bit, circus sideshow. TWI suckered us out of our money, our admiration, our time, and our very lives for the duration of our involvement and beyond. For anyone to say otherwise is a travesty in my mind. Tell me about how AmWay changed your life or the latest pyramid/chain letter has delivered you. That would be every bit as believable.

Yeah, they were in it for the bucks (I guess). Maybe to make it more analogous I should have said "Neither did Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, or Buddha." If a person feels that looking for proof or verification is somehow devious or ill-mannered, boy there's a LOT of stuff they'll have to pay obeisance to. Flying saucers, crop circles, telekinesis, ESP, cold fusion, miraculous healings, and the list goes on. It must be true if someone experienced it, isn't it? I mean, who am I to question the validity of anyone's experience? Why should one be so recalcitrant as to require proof? A good person would simply accept it at face value, right?

"He didn't try to prove anything to the skeptics." And neither did P.T.Barnum, Rich DeVoss, or Ron Popeil, so?

Gawd, isn't every parent going to feel just swell about sending their kids off to school now? And who was the zoning genius who thought it would be great to put a bombing range and a school so close together? Somebody should have some serious esplanin' to do, but, given who the guilty parties most likely are, I somehow doubt much of anything is going to come of it.

learning, Yeah, to anyone who's hung around this site for more than a few months it gets pretty obvious. Jeffy comes on, makes a pitch for us all to mozy on over to the 'ol CES cafe and set a spell, maybe take a class 'er two. The commercials get kinda boring. The script always goes something like "WOW! You should hear the amazing stuff that that great guy JOHN LYNN is saying THESE days. Boy, it's not like that 'ol nasty TWI stuff, no sirree. It's all new and improved and sure to perk up your pathetic P.O.S. life that you're leading." Well, if it keeps him off the streets...

Here's a neat little article on "coincidence". http://skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.html I think it explains a lot. Of course, when it happens to oneself, it's a lot easier to think that it MUST have been a miracle. I guess it would anyway. I never had anything all that miraculous happen in my life. The laws of physics still seem to have me firmly within their grasp.

Socks, "If a person has to be taught what to say, what it's supposed to sound like and the kinds of words and messages that should be coming out, what are we really doing here?" That's the sort of questions that were streaming through my head the first time I took the "TIP" class. Fortunately there were plenty of "fully instructed" types around to straighten me out...

I've never even heard of any "spiritual" incident being overanalyzed. Blind acceptance and rampant credulity seem to be more the order of the day with the "believer" camp I'm familiar with. Good idea Socks. A sort of "All JAL - All the Time" network. I'm sure he'd approve (and Jeff too, no doubt).

"You would have to analyze that also." And why not? Wouldn't that simply be the prudent thing to do? You musta purchased a phenomenal amount of snake oil in your life, if you find simple analysis to be abhorrent.

Oh, and another thing, how do you know the guy wasn't just bull$hitting you? In a twig I used to attend we had a rather eventful evening one time when a certain member of the fellowship got "possessed" and started acting out - and this was a long-standing "old grad" kinda guy. Thus followed a marathon exorcism ritual where we talked to the "spirit" and commanded it out, and all sorts of fun, spiritual stuff. It was sorta scary and exciting and followed a rather accepted TWI-flavored demonic possession scenario. Anyway, afterwards we all felt we had done great work for the Lord, and that our "brother" was now delivered from his spiritual oppression. Problem was, he still acted exactly the same. He didn't have any remarkable improvement in his character or actions. He was still an alcoholic, still immature, and still given to violent mood swings. But he and the rest of the fellowship adamantly declared that he had been "delivered" that night and he wasn't the same man he'd been, despite the fact that none of that was true. It wasn't done out of malice, or deviousness, or a will to deceive. We were all role-playing and just doing our part to make sure the play came out "right". I think that explains an awful lot of the "miraculous" events that happened in WayWorld. But then, I would...