Rocky

I've heard of Arizona. I don't know Mr Mitchell, but I'm glad you have someone with some academic background to at least bounce ideas off of.

Honestly Mark, that reply seems to be entirely off topic and not at all responsive to the questions I posed to you. IOW, it looks like you simply have restated your assumptions a couple of ways. Certainly, as a person with free will, you are absolutely entitled to view the situation in that way. But it doesn't look to further the topic of this discussion. Further, from a rationality standpoint, how much review of your book has been subject to review by biblical scholars? I ask because one of Prof Pinker's main points is that none of us on our own necessarily gets close enough to being rational. We rely on a collaborative relationship with other people to identify and help correct our fallacies. That's why academics and scientists must submit their work for peer review before publication in credible journals.

How does your response, copied herein, explain how you know which thoughts are true and which are false? Really, I don't want to come off as condescending, but what it looks like to me is that you've set forth, in a bit of detail, your assumption(s) which may prevent you from opening your imagination to consider anything outside a fundamental biblical perspective. Is that a fair read/interpretation of your response?

There's only two possibilities of that happening: Slim and none. And Slim is out of town.

Hey Mark, How do you know? Is that just an assumption? If so, what does it get you to do or not do?

How does one, according to your standard, tell the difference?

So, I suppose it's altogether okay if GSC people are not innately curious about spirituality, what's "out there" that's bigger than any of us have been able to even imagine before. But I am innately curious even about things that are outside orthodox religion or Christianity. When I read Dr Bolen's book, it enabled me to rethink some of my experiences. Like the time, when I hitchhiked from Los Angeles to Gunnison the summer before going into residence with the 9th corpse. Among the things I endured/experienced during that particular excursion were what I believed then were God intervening to get me rides. I've expanded my imagination to redefine those events. One reason? Because what I DID then that made the difference was to act of "letting go." Since then, I've read of other people, not claiming such intervention was from God. IOW, God makes (or allows) the rain to fall on the "just and the unjust." Put another way, meaningful events in my life were synchronistic. This YouTube video has what I view as legitimate insight. At one point in it, the speaker mentions politics. But that's only context. It's not a debate about what are good or bad political positions. The vid is under 7 minutes. I hope you enjoy, or at least mindfully listen to the extent you can apply critical analysis to it. If you do so and believe you have a legitimate perspective to debunk this fellow's ideas, by all means, share with us.

To quote a memorable link in a late 1970s TWI promotional movie/video: It vas fee-ah!

Nailed it... I wish your statement had the same dramatic effect that Martin Luther had when he nailed his 95 Theses to the door of a church.

The Great Bible Hoax of 1881: Is the text mistranslated? Thanks for injecting more critical analysis into this thread.

In an email from Penworks just now, she said "No, haven't heard of that, but there's so much stuff out there on the history of the Bible." So, my sense is that the youtube movie is about something that may or may not have been as remarkable as the producers of the movie claim. IOW, in the nearly three hour movie, do they present anything that supports the characterization of this particular hoax as "great?" Or do they at all note that in the nearly two millennia since the start of the Christian era, there may have been other hoaxes or attempted hoaxes that were more easily dismissed?

Well... afaik, the HEAD of the research department is still alive and March(ing) Four(th). The one person from said research dept that occasionally visits GSC might be able to offer some insight. However, she's on the verge of finalizing publication of her second book (which is NOT about TWI).

Intriguing idiom... easily understood by people who have been owned by feline pets.

How very true, especially in combat. Bad leadership kills people. Quickly. For those wanting to explore military leadership and training thereof, I highly recommend two books I read a year or two ago. 1) One Bullet Away: the Making of a Marine Officer by Nathanial Fick 2) General Jim Mattis's memoir, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. There's NFW Victor Wierwille would have made a decent military leader. One must be genuinely compassionate for those entrusted to your care.

Yeah, it took me YEARS to get over that when raising children.

How about that... even back in biblical times, some people grasped the idea of psychological projection. Right you are Twinky!

In case I wasn't clear in the OP for THIS thread, Mr French's topic/thread was context, but this thread changed the subject altogether.

"Just pretentious rhetoric. You know, like a grandious narcissist would do " Indeed. I appreciate the clarification. I had to ask.

Yup. I still remember the blue and gold t-shirts we were given to wear when running 10 Km in the overall trek from somewhere in Indiana (Ball State, maybe) to HQ. I long ago outgrew that shirt but had it for years after that.

Which thread would that be?

Not by me. Huh? Do you mean the original poster on this topic/thread?

Let's not forget that he purposefully taught that we should be slaves. dromos doulu or something like that.

I didn't call you out. I simply responded to something I recalled you having posed to me previously that I wasn't prepared to adequately reply to at the time. Btw, the one thing I might take issue with is your apparently ironic use of the word sesquipedalian.