Mike

The way I'm using words in this context is “profound” involves matters of mind and life and love, i.e., the big issues that come up in everyday life with people. I’m using “trivial” for the more elementary things like matter, super simple matters like Hydrogen, math, numbers, and the things of hard core science. These issues have been dealt with efficiently in recent centuries, BECAUSE the human element has been systematically stripped out as a major theme in the scientific method. There seems to be a huge gap between these two worlds, but it may be filled someday with future developments brain science. However some leaders in the field have a few doubts about this possibility. I had a life long interest in Godel’s Theorem because it seems to bridge this gap in some ways. The elements of the theorem are all “trivial” elements of set theory and the topic mostly is mere numbers. However, with an odd twist, the theorem seems to say something “profound” about the world of mathematics and it’s completeness and/or consistency. Proofs in the human area are IMO not so tight and applicable. I am have not spent a lot of time in this area, and it is here that I have asked for examples of tight proofs. I suspect they don’t exist. Proofs in science and math are plenty tight and their applications clear, but they seem to me to always involve ideas that are not so profound in the human area. My interest in Godel and its possible bridging abilities has diminished in recent years as I have become more familiar with it’s details. It’s still a super interesting area of thought, but I now have less expectations it will help with any breakthroughs in consciousness research.

Here’s something outlandish for you. The reason I constructed home made lie detectors was so I could hook them up to the leaves of common house plants. I only worked with GSR portion of the machine. One of the developers of the polygraph for the CIA had noticed consciousness like behavior when he started looking at plants. I heard him deliver an lecture on this on the radio. I was a cosmic hippie studying consciousness. At the time I was working as a traveling repair man for Western Union in NYC, and in my travels I located the guy and his lab near the middle of Times Square and became a groupie of his. He was pretty wild. This was 1970 and 71. Named Cleve Backster, he and his plants were written up in every magazine in the world through the 70s. He was discredited by most science including Myth Busters.. By coincidence he and I both moved to San Diego 40 years ago.

outlandish?

Well I can wait for people to address the issues instead of trying to construct some kind of box to put me in.

Rocky, I think we mis-communicated somewhere. Someone brought up the bs use of “spiritual maturity” which I think appears as one of the bs rationalizations in the 14 appendixes of the JS adultery paper. I mentioned that that sounded familiar to me, because my twig did a mini-research work on adultery and bs rationalizations that were popping up around the ministry and causing trouble. In other words, me and my twig were blowing the whistle on the bs rationalization “spiritual maturity” a few years before JS did with his paper. Then I opined how bs-laden the “spiritual maturity” thing is in how crazy it is to try and play games with it. I think this is the stage you were asking me about. Did you know about the earlier stages that led to it. I think we mis-communicated, as usual. Do I have the energy to unravel the same kinds of things with the others here ? Now? No. Going to bed for need of sleep is my righteous evasion for the evening.

I can agree. The closer the subject is to sex the less I can relate. It's mostly theory for me then. I just never was that close to any of the abuses or even the uses. Sorry if I disappoint you.

I saw a completely different aspect of the lock box. It exactly coincided with one of the good principles they had in the RC. This VERY STRONG principle of the secrecy of the confessional in the RC gave rise to the lawyer-client privilege we now have in the courts, as well as psychiatrists with their patients. I used the lock box in all my years in the ministry for both me getting counsel from leadership, and for me giving counsel to people who trusted me for it. And and "not thinking evil of your brothers and sisters in Christ" and "You're just as guilty as me." sort of things were part of this noble use of lock box..

That “spiritually mature” part rings a bell. Several years before JS and the adultery paper I was a twig leader in a small way home. We had a carload of young people arrive one day from the State of Maine. I knew bad things had happened there so I braced myself. After a few months some mild events occurred, but eventually one person in the twig was getting confused and hurt, and highly distracted from the word. I made an announcement that for the next few weeks, whenever no new people showed up, we’d do a grad night and work “adultery” and “fornication” from KJV, Young’s, Bullinger, Interlinear, etc. We also collected about 9 rationalizations to casual sex that had floated around sparingly for years. I think the “spiritually mature” thing was one of them. I was surprised and delighted when I first saw the JS paper on adultery. He had about 14 appendixes that were the same rationalizations we had 9 of. We had done a mini JS paper in 1979ish. I could see someone who was dulled to questionable behavior, and therefore a pushover for any rationalization. Dulled to it yes; spiritually mature, pretty unlikely. Even more unlikely computing in the changing of minds days or years later. Maturity can be easily miscalculated. It can also go down. It always sounded like the thinnest of ice to me, if solid at all. I lived in a nerd world where these things never happened in real life. I missed out on a lot of fun, but it looks like I missed out on a lot of misery also. But the “degrees of sin” thing didn’t seem capable of lulling people into something they had boundaries against. Luckily, I was spared all this.

I totally agree... after the overthinking comment. I was saying that God can do the same. In fact, I think He did when David's situation deteriorated to killing Uriah.

Not using pure evil models. I see all of us, me, vpw, David, Saul, Paul etc more like checkerboards, oscillating back and forth between good and evil. It's a battle. With humans the end battle is sure doom. With the Savior, Jesus Christ, who in several ways overcame this in himself, we have hope of escape from this eventual sure doom that natural man is facing. Get it? Individuals are complicated and go in and out of fellowship. I have seen myself do this many times in one day, during unstable phases of my life. Other times I do better. I think this is the way it works for all of us. Mankind in general tends toward the pure evil, but in a checkerboard style, not a pure style.

Good points. Some of these are new to my thinking. Some ponder time. Here is something to separate out also: God's feeling or reaction to various sins VERSUS God's recognition that one sin may hurt another person more than a lesser sin. Some of the above scriptures may connect to the later. I tend to lean to the "no degrees of sin" idea when dealing with broader issues, like mankind in general. When an individual human being is involved I lean heavily toward the more practical idea of "the greater the hurt, the greater corrective actions must be taken." I don't see how Way people could get fooled very much on the "no degrees of sin" idea, but then again, I never saw it being applied to a situation that demanded big punishments for big hurts to humans.

Wow! This thread has turned into a Doctrinal Potpourri! I need to fill in a score card to keep track of all the ideas. I admitted before, some of this father/mother stuff is territory I felt needed no more checking decades ago, and no red flags popped up for me since. As a result I am very rusty on some of these micro-topics, and switching more to a learning mode as I catch up on reading. The the human lying phenomenon I've studied much, not just from the Biblical perspective, but from the medical/scientific one as well. As far as Jesus Christ and "white lies" I don't know. How about euphemisms? Could he use them in his speech? I've wondered if he got the flu, and lean to a "yes." I've also wondered if he got spanked or rodded when a toddler. It says he fulfilled the law, so does that mean he was married at some point? There are lots of marriage laws in there. Sometimes I think the Word does not spell out this stuff for us for the same reason God made Christ Jesus absent or invisible or whatever on that day of Ascension long ago. If we knew the trivia on Young Jesus it would probably not lead us in the most desired direction. If we could text JC, and meet him at Starbucks it would probably undermine our ability to grow up to fill his shoes.

Again, it's not the person that's important, it's all those gathered messages that I'm interested in. I find the person to be a major distraction. I prefer to look away from him.

RottieGrrrl, You got it. I feel the same way. Oops! Maybe I go a little farther with it. :) I think if God had given us His Word via a person that is easy to like and very charming and lovable, then we’d all rush to that PERSON (not the message) and salaam him/her for ever, even more than lots of vpw worshippers did in TWI-1. We’d measure our spirituality, not on how well we absorb the message, but how close can we get to the person, just like in TWI. I liken it to a sirloin steak smothered in $hitsauce. You gotta really want that meat real bad, to clean it off well and eat it. <gag> Even I do a double take at that, but it’s true. *** I apologize for temporarily ignoring lots of posts this morning. It’s a busy weekend.

But wouldn't a proof of the impossibility of proving profound things be a profound thing proved itself?

I have a little time before I go out tonight. By "race of Adam" I mean "progeny owned by Adam." Please don’t ask me about “owned.” My knowledge trails off here. I just don’t know. Jesus was owned by his Father, Who was not in Adam's progeny. Therefore Jesus was not owned by the adversary. But the adversary does own everyone else. When I see portions of verses like “all men are liars” I think of Romans 3:10-19 which is a compilation of OT verses: *** As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”[e] “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. *** Add to that Romans 7 and you have the answer to Mary, and all her ancestors. BTW, this is part of the support for the idea that there are no degrees of sin with God. Do you see it? Even religious people who are nice and don’t bother people are dead inside due to sin. Some actions can be nice… for a while, but the human heart is rotten and it eventually reigns in human affairs. Jesus had chromosomes from both Mary and God, but was owned by God. This is all the homework for your spiritual nourishment I care to put work into, because I’m sure no matter how much I do, it won’t satisfy you. I’m satisfied with this much proof, for now. It you want more PLEASE find someone else to explain it to you, and don’t make me have to evade you.

How about lacking motivation? I'm far more interested in why you folks are having a hard time with such elementary ideas. Is it the case that you are using these simple ideas merely as goads to get me into a long blown out debate on a topic I find not very interesting. All men liars= intriguing; JC not liar=elementary. For which of these two are you craving proofs and scriptures?

No, those other words miss it. I'm not interested in this that much to put the work into it. Like I said, I'm surprised you are having trouble with it. It's also a little funny that you reject my answer, and then demand I come up with another answer. Is that what's happening?

I'm a little surprised you folks are having trouble with this. It's really elementary. You should check it out how other churches handle it. I'd expect no surprises. Instead of merely shooting down what I said, why not built something up. Check out how other theologians have handled it. How about Bullinger?

Hire is one tight proof of a profound idea.....Godel's Theorem. However, this profound idea is in the trivial arena of mathematics, not life, love and mind.

I already answered this, but I can see it's not understood by some. Why is everything a proof? And how do you prove a negative. Statement: It has been my experience that hardly any tight proofs of profound ideas exist. Period. QED That is my experience. It is proved. I'm a witness to my own experience. Now, without any proofs whatsoever, I throw out the challenge to produce one tight proof of a profound idea. I would kinda like my hunch to be proved wrong. I've thrown this out now about 3 times and on the proof thread I did another 3 times. No takers. Do I win this proof by default?

I think it would be a burden for any of us to come up with any tight proof for anything significant. My aim is not to prove this, but to announce it as my expectation. Anyone who is able to prove my hunch wrong is invited. I like learning.

I was referring just now to polls I did before coming here. These were all conducted individually on phone, in person, or e-mail. That was for one piece of data. It was an example of missed or forgotten data that I wanted to make known. When I came here in 2002 I was not able to count the numbers, but it was obvious that VPW's last teaching and many other pieces of data were missing in many minds.

Can you find evidence to the contrary? In other words, what great profound proofs do you know of? I think it's pretty neat that Quantum Mechanics can be proved by how well it explains the Hydrogen atom. But the Hydrogen atom is pretty trivial. I'm sure I could use more education on this, but so far I think most of the tight proofs out there are not involving life and love and mind. Plato and Aristotle seem to be neat until it comes to applications. I'm open to entertain the existence of tight proofs in Philosophy. Hit me with some.