Rocky

That's not EVEN what this thread was intended to do. Discussion, not argumentation.

Good morning to you too, kind sir. This is just one of the influences.

Hmmmm.... oh, really?

Whether this will successfully inoculate anyone against getting conned, including into joining a cult, is yet to be seen. Given the marketing material surrounding this very recently published book, the authors seem to think it might. You MIGHT be able to find this book in your local public library... or to ask them to purchase it. Also, I listened to a podcast about the subject this morning. The podcast mentions the gorilla experiment. Said experiment illustrates the power of misdirection (of attention). The misdirection concept relates directly to the instruction during PFLAP classes to hold all questions until the end. https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/e/why-we-fall-for-fraud/

Truth!

That's not the question. Of course you have SOME DEGREE of free will. But do you have 100 percent, unqualified free will? Do you ever do anything, take any actions, make any decisions, contrary to what you wanted to do? Also, on the tangential topic of whether Victor Wierwille conned you (and me) and thousands of others, I recommend this newly released book. Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It. You might be able to find it in your local public library.

Good job, Mike. The opposite of persuasion. One might think if you actually wanted to make positive headway in your Quixotic endeavors on GSC, you'd recognize THIS is an encouragement to YOU.

And I'm confident he was still projecting. No doubt Loy and twi could have gotten sued, but I doubt the major studio(s) cared because who knew about the spirits of the athletes besides people in the cult?

IIRC, Loy bragged about the movie Staying Alive having copied from AotS. But it appears Staying Alive came out in 1983. I'm pretty sure that was WELL before Loy's narcissistic wannabe dance/video masterpiece. It looks like Loy was doing some projecting on that one.

What feeds guilt and shame is a deep desire to belong, a survival issue for any social animal. The greatest underlying worry is rejection by the group. De Waal, Frans . Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves (p. 154). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. I offer the quote from Mama's Last Hug for anyone's consideration. Clearly, when I started this topic/thread, I was not clear enough to get my point across. And then there was Bolshevik who seemed to be looking for ways to obscure anyone else's points about just about everything.

I'm thinking about how big of a PITA you often are. BTW, where was/is Victor Wierwille's peer reviews on his private interpretations of scripture?

Oh really!? That is SOOOOOOOOO much crap. Sure, he became convinced. That's proof? No, it isn't. I believe you know that. Where were the theologians/scholars with whom he obtained concurrence after presenting his research? Oh? He didn't, you say? More evidence of the cultic nature of his personal ministry and the subculture he built around it. If he was the ONLY one who was able to put it together, that should be evidence enough to warn people of the lack of godly authority for his schtick. Nevertheless, you seemingly have again succeeded in commandeering a thread and making it about you.

That MIGHT be the essence of what Victor Wierwille was trying to suppress when he beckoned PFLAP students to only read PFLAP collaterals. I'm thinking of you, Mike. I realize you don't limit your reading to PFLAP materials these days. I also realize you are curious about other things. But ARE you genuinely curious about the veracity of PFLAP and the associated collaterals?

And speaking of missed (deliberate or not) irony, 9. Gurwinder's Theory of Bespoke ....: Many don’t have an opinion until they’re asked for it, at which point they cobble together a viewpoint from whim and half-remembered hearsay, before deciding that this two-minute-old makeshift opinion will be their new hill to die on. Solution: Discard all the opinions you thought of instinctively. Resist the reflex to offer impromptu answers, and become comfortable with saying “I don’t yet have enough information.”

Your theory? Really? As if it's not, instead, what you've come to believe as a result of what someone has taught you? Your "theory" would suggest you did actual academic research on neurobiology, psychology, social psychology and related disciplines. If you've read other people's research, bravo. But that wouldn't make any of it "your theory." It COULD make it something you've come to believe through having read the works of actual academicians. I do that kind of thing. But I don't self-aggrandize and call any of it "my theory" or even "my hypothesis."

Btw, Mike, Victor Wierwille MAY have thought or considered that he even asked HIMSELF that/those question(s) EVERY single damn day of his ministry. But evidence recorded in Undertow by Charlene L Edge strongly suggests to me that if he did ask himself those questions, he deceived himself into believing contrary to the reality of his practices. Was he lying? I can't say. However, I've learned enough about emotional and psychological defense mechanisms (tactics) to lead me to believe he could not bring himself to honestly answer those questions in the way he wanted "his Way Corps(e)" to answer them.

Do you have any documentation to back up your conjecture about to whom he referred? I know, that's your story and you're sticking to it. But it has nothing to do with anything on the topic of this thread.

This is NOT a statement of fact. It's a story. "Eve considered some bunk info..." Not only did the developer(s) of the AC on PFLAP NOT have any legitimate data upon which to make a true statement, but it is structured as a story. The conclusion, "what we can know by the 5 senses God expects us to know" is not founded either on scripture or anything that could be reasonably taken as factual. It's something Victor Wierwille decided God had meant and he taught it as such. IOW, he conjured it up. That's essentially what I meant by characterizing the paragraph as a story.

No. I don't input your posts into my mental database, sorry.

It's not anything but a story you told. No qualification as to whether it's true or not.

The stronger your beliefs, the stronger your reasons to question them regularly. Don’t simply believe everything you think you believe. Kelly, Kevin. Excellent Advice for Living (p. 161). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Btw, Mike, that is a story.