Raf

"I can't believe it, uh... he did all of this and... we did nothing to him." "Ah, that's not true. We fed him."

I would be pleasantly surprised if that turned out to be correct, Waysider. ;)

Piggybacking (plagiarizing?) on what geisha said earlier: This post bothered me a great deal, but a little shift in perspective helped bring me down from my high horse. Let's get something straight: I neither know nor care why 90% of former TWI members avoid GSC. A decent percentage of former TWI members still believe Wierwille was some unique man of God and are doing everything they can to preserve his legacy. A decent percentage don't spend a lot of time on the Internet, and certainly not in forums and chat rooms. A decent percentage are perfectly fine without GSC. A small percentage think Wierwille's written works are a Newer Testament. I don't view it as my responsibility, or GSC's, to recruit as many former TWI followers as possible. GSC is here for them, not the other way around. To hate this thread with a deep hatred takes one of two things: a contempt for being "tempted away" from an experience you genuinely believe to be godly (aka, truly righteous indignation), or the touching of a raw nerve. Maybe it's a combination of the two. I don't know. But I suspect I've touched a nerve, and I've done it in a way that is logically consistent and deeply troubling for a lot of people. Those who believe their experience is genuine need not be troubled by my thesis. After all, I'm wrong. Does the presence of Islam in the world fill you with a deep hatred? Hinduism? Shintoism? No. But the existence of an argument that dares to suggest a practice that does not appear to produce what the Bible says it's supposed to produce might not actually be genuine? Hatred. I submit that the hatred is inappropriate and wrongly directed. This thread, and my argument within it, are not worthy of hate. Agree with it. Disagree with it. Argue with it. Ignore it. Debate it. Dismiss it. But hating this thread means you not only hate my position -- you hate the very presence of the discussion. How do I put this? Boo. Hoo. We were under the thumb of an oppressive regime that squelched debate and squashed free thought and inquiry as ungodly. What was the first mistake Eve made? She considered it. And ever since then we were taught it was a divine virtue not to even consider that the claptrap we were being fed might, gasp, be flipping WRONG. You know what I hate? I hate the lie.

Geisha, your first interpretation of my post was fair but incorrect. I am solely responsible for the miscue, for which I am sorry. I know I was not being attacked on any personal level. Your second interpretation of my post was correct: the thread was attacked, and that is what I meant to convey. Pete, There is a fatal flaw in the brain wave studies, which did indeed show that the language centers of the brain were not active in the tongues speakers. The problem is that they picked the wrong control group. They compared someone speaking in tongues to that same person (or other people) speaking with their understanding. That there would be a difference is not surprising. But "speaking with the understanding" should not have been the control group. The brain waves of someone speaking in tongues should have been compared against the brain waves of someone engaging in free vocalization, someone knowingly doing what I and others admit we did for years. To make it a double-blind study, the person administering the test should not know whether his subject believes himself to be genuinely speaking in tongues or is knowingly faking the experience. If brain waves of two speakers are compared within those parameters, I would be confident that my thesis would be borne out. Then again, even that's not necessarily true: if the machines reading the brain activity can pick up differences in intent, we would have no real way of knowing that. Do the brain waves of someone who really believes what he's doing is SIT look any different from the brain waves of someone who is knowingly engaging in free vocalization? That would change the game. So even then, we can't really find much in the way of "proof" in brain wave studies. What those studies tell us is that when someone is engaging in SIT, they are not using the language centers of the brain. Earlier in this thread, I posited that this is still consistent with free vocalization (I hadn't encountered that term yet, so I used different words). If I began speaking in tongues, I would expect the brain wave activity to show exactly what it showed. If, on the other hand, I deliberately set out to make certain, specific sounds (say, for example, I wanted to specifically recall and say "semanto rela feno shinistima kana lochanta coloprionday"), then the language centers of my brain would likely activate precisely because I'm not making it up as I go along. I hope I'm being clear: the reason the study is flawed, in my opinion, is that it does not establish what "making it up as you go along" looks like. You're making the mistake of equating "speaking with the understanding" and "making it up as you go along." I contend that those brain waves would look markedly different from each other. But the study never considered that question. To answer your final question: at this point I have elected to keep my prayer life to myself.

Hate with a deep hatred, not the one who sold you the lie, but the one who suggests you got cheated and deserve a refund.

Thanks for sharing that.

Not as far off the mark. But far off the mark.

No Way too small. Think bigger.

AHAT, I think the clues on this thread are supposed to be reeeeal easy. Maybe you've picked quotes better suited for Name That Flick, where stumping people is a little more the norm? Or maybe this is a real easy quote to a movie I don't know.

"Oh! Damn, uh! That's a negative impact, sir! I repeat, that's a negative impact!" "Negative impact? That's the g--damned Chrysler Building!

Can I assume you meant Goonies?

No worries, excy. Make of all of this what you will. It's easy for anyone to dismiss my view as my projecting my admission onto other people. If I'm wrong, that's the obvious explanation for why.

Think teen vampires. Real vampires, not those sparkly bastages

The key in that whole argument was to debunk it on its own terms. That, to me, was the critical part of the whole enterprise. To disprove the presented thesis by pointing out the "error" of dispensationalism (the course you were eager to pursue, Steve), would have had no effect, because PFAL declares you wrong and PFAL is God-breathed. That's why there was so much nitpicking in Actual Errors. The items on the list are largely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but they are devastating to the claim of inerrancy and perfection. So what if Wierwille wrote in one book that "Judas went and hanged himself" meant one thing while writing in another book that "Judas went and hanged himself" means something else entirely? We intuitively understood that as a growth (or change) in the understanding of the writer, and we accept that the later explanation is the one held by Wierwille as the more accurate. But if both books are God-breathed, we have there a devastating contradiction that cannot be explained away. One of the two explanations had to be wrong. It doesn't matter which one: the FACT that it was a contradiction demolished the claim of inerrancy. Tenacity? Maybe. But there was pride and arrogance in that whole enterprise too, a fact of which I am not particularly proud. I lament that the logic and reason I employed apparently had no effect on its intended recipient, but I am grateful that it helped others.

Yes! The other was The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Keanu Reeves Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure Alex Winters (I can only think of one other movie with Alex Winters, and I don't think he has any lines in it. But he's very visible, and it's a wildly famous movie with a lot off well known actors to link to).

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Steve, I'm afraid you gave the effort a tad too much credit. While I have been assured that the list helped break through the illusion of perfection that some placed on PFAL even while paying lip service to its imperfections, the truth is, by design, I never even tried to systematically examine Wierwille's errors. My entire argument was based on internal consistency/inconsistency, my goal merely to show that the written works of VPW did not pass their own test of what it is to be God-breathed. I never sought to prove or disprove Wierwille's key doctrines. More deserving of the accolade you bestow is Jerry Barrax's PFAL Review threads, which went through the book and class chapter by chapter, session by session. THAT was truly the first effort I saw to systematically examine Wierwille's doctrines and errors. Jerry went after the substance. By comparison, I nitpicked. I would argue that the most substantive issue addressed in Actual Errors was Wierwille's distinction between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven. For all Wierwille's examination, the clear Biblical distinction between the terms was purely semantic. The terms are utterly synonymous. Appreciate the kind words, though (you too, Geisha).

Different movie hint: a 1990s drama about a crazed nanny.

Has it been 10 years? When I think of all I could have done with that utter waste of time and energy...

Yes. There's a saying: The difference between a cult and a false religion is that in a cult, there's someone at the top who knows this is all a scam. In a false religion, that person's dead.

Old Skool: Make it once or twice a week instead of once or twice a day. Make the hearers primed to receive a comforting or encouraging word instead of weary at the vain repetition. I come into a meeting, eager to hear words of exhortation and comfort from God. You go into the same meeting, eager to be called as the vessel through which these words of exhortation and comfort will be shared. You're called, and you bring forth the message that's in your heart. Maybe you thought it out beforehand, but you're clever enough that you don't always need to do that. You just speak, and your mind supplies you with memories of similar comforting messages and the tiny or vast Biblical knowledge stored in your brain. The message you speak, which you WANT to contain exhortation and comfort, SURPRISE! consists of exhortation and comfort. I, primed to hear such a message, am exhorted and comforted! SURPRISE! Then we reverse roles when I'm the one called. It's God! Poppycock. Horse manure. I don't know what to make of Steve's accounts. From a skeptical standpoint, one could say that we're bound to hit on some stunning prophecies over the course of decades of operating the manifestation that will result in people responding in the way the Bible predicts (which, did you ever notice, rarely happened?). A broken clock is right twice a day, right? Or maybe Steve is absolutely correct in attributing those rare instances to God's intervention. Who am I to dispute it? Steve offers it as personal experience and belief, not as "proof." And he's entitled to that, as we all are. On the other hand, prophesying to a bedridden cancer patient that death will come calling shortly doesn't strike me as all that much of a miracle. I predicted my sister's death in August. That wasn't God cluing me in on anything. She was approaching the fifth anniversary of an ALS diagnosis. While longer survival rates are not uncommon, they are certainly the exception. Now and then you get a bizarrely lengthy survival rate, like Stephen Hawking. But that's exceedingly rare. ALS patients don't go on to live 40 years after diagnosis, as a rule. As an exception? Yes. As a rule, no. And I suppose we can't attribute Hawking's longevity to his faith: he's about as atheist as they come. I have no reason to believe Steve's wife was exercising a divine manifestation when she told a cancer patient the end was near. But I certainly have no Biblical reason to discount the possibility. For all I know, maybe THAT was what this poor woman needed to hear. I deeply appreciate the honesty with which everyone on this thread, including those who think I'm dead wrong, have addressed this subject. Thank you all.

The monarchy of Gondor is restored when fat, uncouth American John Goodman takes the throne.

Hint, he's in a movie whose title will never be won by Rosalee Rivenbark. A 1990s comedy about a sort of beauty contest.

Wierwille and TWI defined and explained the three manifestations in terms that invited, nurtured and rewarded fakery.

An Affair to Remember the Titans. FYI, I met coach herman boone. Nice guy