Mike

My first excursions into this area were merely reading the introductions and prefaces to several Greek Interlinear texts. I don't remember when, but at some point in my 1970s New Testament Canon research it dawned on me that the "Critical Greek texts" were NOT named that way to indicate them to be the ancient texts that are the most critically important, as in a mild case of desperately important. It was shocking to me that the word "critical" referred to criticism and judgement. Then I discovered that hardly any other grads had become aware of this. Not only that, but as I did some informal grad polls in the early 2000s, it became apparent the most grads, leaders included, thought the critical Greek texts originated in the early centuries, like the 3rd or 4th. That the ink was still wet on the Stevens Text in 1550 was entirely unknown in the grad population. As I got to slowly understand the mechanics of how these texts were produced it became apparent to me that the process was much like archeology. But lastly, in more recent decades, what amazes me the most are the inherent spiritual challenges that are in this field. What the critical Greek texts essentially are, in a spiritual sense, is a bit alarming. They are scholarly 5-senses detective projects aimed at unscrambling what the devil scrambled in the early church, starting a little before the apostles died. Scholars matching wits with the devil seemed like an unfair match to me. I got the impression of a wide open door the devil has to influence God's people, entrapping them in denominations, to prevent them from learning the power in the manifestations.

Exactly twenty years ago today I posted this. Much of the contents of this appeared on the earlier pages of this thread. This post initiated a thread titled "Innies and Outies - All men are liars The thread was pruned in the Bandwidth Crisis. */*/*/*/*/*/*/* posted December 25, 2002 12:13 The Truth About Lies Many, many threads here have focused on truth vs. untruth and so I thought I’d put in my two cents. This is my first post here after years of friendly lurking since Waydale. Since leaving TWI in 1989, I have carefully cultivated a set of rather extreme beliefs compared to most of you, and I feel a need to go slowly in attempting to communicate them here. I don’t want to start off by offending people or scaring anyone off, so I chose this relatively safe topic based on a few recent threads about lying that now look to have somewhat run their courses. Over the years I have had a varied correspondence with several of you privately, for which I am thankful, and now I hope finally to add something to this public forum. Some of you know me personally, and we’re still actually friends, in spite of doctrinal differences! Hi Mandii ! Hello Pamsandiego ! Will you two at least verify that I’m not WAYGB if I’m ever placed under that suspicion? I’ll try not to embarrass you both with my extreme doctrinal stances, but there may be times I want to ask you to vouch for my integrity. I guess that the best way to make friends here is by relating how I too was hurt by the ministry machinations. This is something we all have in common. We all got hit in one way or another with lies, and maybe some of us even told a few ourselves. It just so happens that the subject of lying was very interesting to me well before I got into the Word, and I’ve spent about 35 years of pondering the topic. My initial interest was in the electronics that polygraphs are based on. As I became educated in the Bible, during TWI’s good old days, the phrase “all men are liars” seemed to be a frequently underlying motif for many Bible passages, contrasting with the total trustworthiness of God, His Word, and His Son. Then, during TWI’s first collapse in the late Eighties, I frequently found myself being lied to by the leaders (from twi AND from splinter groups) as I attempted to confront them or extract information from them. It was a very confusing time, and most leadership was keeping unusually quiet about all the raging issues. Sometimes it wasn’t quite lying that they did, but certainly the factual info was being withheld in one way or another, and that went on for years. I often noticed that slightly different words or phrases would describe the situation other than “lie,” but these would still be words with many connotations similar to simple lying. The next area relating to lying that got my attention was in studying the workings of the human brain. During the Nineties I happened to live near one of the world’s largest brain research facilities, and all that decade I enjoyed getting to know some of the scientists that worked there. I was allowed to attend seminars with many top scholars in the field, and was invited to parties at their houses. In that field they often study people who are the unfortunate victims of severe brain damage, and a very frequent phenomenon they observe is what they call “confabulation.” Confabulation is a nice word for “lying.” It turns out that many different forms of brain injury can result in the victims lying a lot. It is truly a pitiful situation, especially when the lies are very transparent. The victims are totally unaware of how incredulous their words are. For example: a totally blind person claiming to have perfect sight to an eye doctor! This lends a lot of support to the Biblical contention that we ALL are very predisposed to lie, but when our brains are intact we employ very complex skills that can hide this profuse lying from others (and ourselves) very well. So, I heard some new synonyms for “lying” in my exposure to these scientists, and started collecting a list of such words and phrases to assist me in my lack of skill in confronting ministry leaders. I learned to expect resistance from them, and I wanted to be able to spot it as it happened, not hours later, so I tried to somewhat prepare myself this way. I figured that if I was sharper at spotting their dodges, then I could get better at on-the-spot follow-up questions that could circumvent the dodge. They had a policy of keeping mum on all behind-the-scenes ministry info and I was developing a policy of penetrating this barrier. This proceeded for several years, as I struggled with leadership in a newly evolving twi-clone splinter group that pretty well took over my area. As I got more and more aggressive in confronting leadership, the common forms of persecution that religions often degenerate to became more the rule than the exception. I was confronted unjustly at times, and somewhat shunned at times. Eventually I experienced a few more psychological horrors other than mere lying, and it all got to be quite a zoo. Of all the hurts reported here at GS that TWI-2 went through during the Nineties, this very similar splinter group ALSO went through, just on a much smaller scale. It was late in this period, around 1997, that a scandal broke out in the national news involving a man named Larry Lawrence, who had lied about his military service and ended up being buried in Arlington National Cemetery. It was front page news for weeks, and the reporters covering the story nearly doubled my list of synonyms for “lying.” Then another big news event hit the front pages: the Clinton/Lewinski scandal. President Clinton’s lying was portrayed in the media by many more words and phrases that were added to my expanding my list. Still today, every now and then I run across another, and the list grows a little more. I’m placing a SHORT version of this list below. The full list has many very subtle entries, and some that only communicate to a specialized field. So remember, this is the SHORT list. If it’s the case that Eskimos have some 22 words for “snow” because they are so immersed in the white stuff, WHAT DOES THIS BLIZZARD OF A LIST SAY for the human condition in general? What does it say about OUR old man nature? Is there anyone out there in GreaseSpotLand that thinks they are really immune to this? If so, please come forward with your secret... ...and be honest about it! The Short List air brushed alias alter ego ambiguous artificial bait and switch bamboozle based on a true story bend the truth bias bluff bogus bribe broken promise bull$hit bunk camouflage check's in the mail circuitous clandestine comedy con game confabulate conflabulate - Batman, I only weigh 108 pounds. conspiracy contradiction cook the books counterfactual counterfeit cover story cover up covert operation crossed fingers deceive denial deviate dilute diplomacy disguise dishonest disingenuous distort dog and pony show double minded downplay drivel embelishmentationalism embellish emphasize equivocal ersatz espionage euphemism evade exaggerate fable fabricate facetious facsimile fake fallacy falsehood fantasy feign feign fib fiction figment of imagination figure of speech finagle flatter flim flam flimsy excuse force fit fraud games people play go through the motions gossip half truth hallucinate heresy he's in a meeting hoax hokey hoodwink hooey hoopla horse feathers humor hype hypochondriac hypocrite hysteria idiom illusion imaginary impersonate impostor incognito inconsistent infidelity inflated claim innuendo insinuate interpretation irrational it's the alcohol talking jest jocular joke josh jury tamper just between us juxtaposition kidding kiss up lame excuse lawyer lead on libel lie lure make believe make up malarkey man made manipulate (the truth) masquerade metaphorical mirage mirth misinformation misspeak mistake mock up myth No, darling. That dress doesn't make you look fat at all. nonsense obfuscate occlude off the record optimist oversimplification oxymoron padded bill padded cellular phony pickup lines pat answer pen name perjury persona pessimist phantom phony placate placebo plagiarism plastic play along with play down play up ploy poetic license politician pomp poppycock post-progressive prank press release pretend professional wrestling prop propaganda protocol pseudo psychological warfare psychosomatic publicity stunt pull the wool pulling leg pun put best foot forward put on rationalization ravings renege resume reverse psychology rhetoric rogue role playing rose colored glasses rumor ruse sales pitch sarcasm satire scam schizophrenic sea story secrecy seduce sensationalize shallow shenanigans shield from the truth shifty eyed shill showy shtick silly simulate siren song skepticism skin deep beauty slander slant slight of hand sloganeer smear campaign smoke screen sneaky snooker snow job spin spoof spoof stage personality stand in stretch the truth substitute subterfuge subvert sugar coat superstition surreal surrogate take with a grain of salt tall tale tax deduction technicality the fish was THIS big theatrics thespian throwing the bull tip the scales tone down touch up toy with trick twist the truth two faced typo ulterior unofficial water down white lie white wash with a wink and a nod yarn yes man you're leading me on Posts: 3140 | Location: San Diego | Registered: December 17, 2002 (edited for code glitches and typos)

I once had a long argument over this here, and I demonstrated how Stephen King would write so that his story would interpret itself.... eventually. Mystery stories exploit the idea of placing hidden keys that can be uncovered by only the most astute readers. I think Conan Doyle pioneered this style of deliberately making it a mystery, but also having clues planted. I should search for that debate in my archives someday.

Yes, and whatever keys that are not in that category of the Bible interpreting itself. That category is 80 pages in the book. I think there are other keys in that book outside that section, and some in RHST also. Even Orientalisms is a key that I use for working the PFAL collaterals, except I translate it over to Ohio-isms. Example: my first printing of the Blue Book there is a phrase something like "un-loosing a dog," which is an Ohio expression for un-leashing a dog. It was changed in all the other printings to remove the Ohio-ism. So that's two keys I use to work the collaterals: wait however long for the answer, and Ohio-isms can be involved.

Gee Wizz ! It's a Christmas Quiz ! Please think through your peppering of me with questions. I think many of them you can answer in detail just by browsing the table of contents for the PFAL book. If you don't have that book, why not get one? You should have a copy of that which you criticize. */*/*/* One of the great illusions attached to debates it the urge to rush, to come up with the best answer QUICK. Going fast is good for a movie depiction of a debate, and the last one to stump the other one is the manifest winner. That is not the way proofs and derivations go in math and science. In regards to this timing thing, one of the PFAL keys to work difficult but important passages of text ..... is being willing to place an apparent anomaly off to the back burner, even it it takes 15 years to get the answer. That is one of the keys I use in working the Bible, PFAL, and posted text here. There is a place (Way Mag Our Times Jul/Aug 1979) where VPW says that the PFAL keys could be applied to just about any texts, not just the Bible. */*/*/*/*/* Anyway, I get little spurts of time to work on these posts with you folks, and then I need to do other chores. While I am not answering your questions to me, why not brainstorm amongst yourselves for possible answers. It will save me some time if I don't have to do a lot of careful reading and composing. If you present me with a list of possible answers, I can quickly check off the easy ones. Going slow is often better for thoroughness on both sides.

Real time chatting like this is easy to get posts lost in the shuffle. I got to slow down.

I did not mean to be elusive. I thought I said it plainly, but maybe a little to compactly.

Yes.

I mentioned them in more detail to Nathan above this way: Pretty much the same methods [in PFAL] we were taught to work the ancient Scriptures (often tattered remnants), where it is assumed [attitude] that the originals were perfect revelation. I admit that is an unusual method, but that is where my search led me and said "this is the end of the rainbow."

I think the ministry's woes are not traceable to the collaterals, but to the T.V.T.s and the Corps people who magnified them.

What I pay attention to is what a person is willing to bet their life on, with all of life's investments. There are a few different kinds of surety, and a few different kinds of proof or derivations of surety.

Pretty much the same methods we were taught to work the ancient Scriptures (often tattered remnants), where it is assumed that the originals were perfect revelation. I admit that is an unusual method, but that is where my search led me and said "this is the end of the rainbow."

I disagree on the number of genuine errors detected, because I disagree with the methods and attitudes with which that detection process was conducted. GreaseSpot is the only large, free speech networking hub for grads of PFAL. It's a little like Twitter's monopoly on politics, and how Facebook has the the monopoly on finding old friends from many decades ago. There were previously, when I first started posting, many more active proPFAL posters here, and every now and then they check in. Many of them now may be Read-Only Audience or ROA. Also in the ROA audience may be many more proPFAL people who never or rarely posted. I get PMs from a small number of them, and I suspect there are many more. For many years GreaseSpot was the only place to get grad news, and it still functions as that kind of service, even though Facebook recently took small a chunk recently. GreaseSpot champion's Free Speech and the previously silenced "Other Side" to TWI's official news and notices. I think that GSC's motto to this effect is still posted somewhere. When I started posting my icon motto was "offering the OTHER other side." I view GSC as where a large body of PFAL grads, networking in many ways. I think many of the gripes and grievances expressed here are valid. I also think this kind of blowing the whistle has gone way too far and it promotes fictions that are harmful to my grad brothers and sisters. I think we still have something to offer people in PFAL, and once again challenge the devil's grip on the kingdoms of this world. I don't see much of that challenging these days, and I think I know why and the solution.

I can have a civil conversation. It is just that there seems to be boundaries you put around it. I try to minimize my boundaries; everyone’s got some. - Anything negative about VP you refute then later try to claim you don’t idolize him. -Not anything; but yes, some few things. I walk away from anything refuting the written collaterals, especially if the methods used to probe the collaterals differ extremely from my chosen methods. But pretty much all else I can discuss, assuming I have some solid knowledge. There are topics where I don’t feel qualified to discuss much. I take note of my ignorance the best I can, because I am a total expert on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, having read a couple articles on it. You have some kind of weird vision about yourself that you are the reincarnation of Luke the physician sent to give an “accurate and loving “ account of TWI history. -No, I am only trying to imitate him and what he did. I am NOT trying to write anything God-breathed; just accurate and balanced, and thorough enough. It looks like an unvarnished history of the Church’s history was a good thing in Luke’s time. I think the same thing is important to do for TWI, especially now that the primary witnesses are dying off fast. I do not want to do this alone. I want others to jump in and help me with this. I don’t want to be the chairman of that committee, because that is an area I have no solid knowledge. The current written history of TWI consists of two channels: sanctioned and unsanctioned. Right. GreaseSpot is the major shareholder in the unsanctioned text at this time, IMO. An unsanctioned history, if well written enough, could get recognized by TWI-7 a few decades from now. It could also get recognized by thousands of proPFAL grads right now, as well as those grads not proPFAL. Sanctioned - Mrs VPW book which only covers before 1980s. I was around when this was being written and my feedback is it was highly coerced. -Her history is useful, and part of the mix, but it has nothing to say of POP or the Schoenheit Paper or RnR The Way Living In Love - the ONLY literary record of VPs KoolAid snowstorm story which was fact checked to be false by multiple sources. -I would insist it be kept in the mix, even though I don’t buy the fact checking, and debated it several times here. HOWEVER, the 1942 snowstorm is NOT in the collaterals, and therefore not critical that I maintain belief in it. It wouldn’t be crossing my boundaries to think VPW made mistakes in his recounting the stories. I sometimes merge memories and get facts of my past incorrect . It [The Way Living In Love] was removed from sale in the bookstore at some point and can’t be bought there anymore. -I would suspect the REASON it was removed has nothing to do with the snowstorm(s) being fact-checked here. Far more probably is the USUAL POLICY of removing anything in TWI history that “are no longer standing with the ministry.” When I worked in Tape Duplicating there would be a memo a couple times per year to “pull” the old SNT teaching tapes of an new ex-Way minister. We sold by mail and at large events many popular “back issues” of the SNT tapes. Another probable reason for its removal is Elena Whiteside “no longer standing with the ministry.” Another probable reason is Elena objected to it being sold. Unsanctioned - 3 published books -Reading one; not in a rush for the others. Look in T bones footnotes for publishing links -I save some of his links. Who knows when I get the time for them. …when I think I need them for something. All 3 unsanctioned books detail personal stories of negative overall impact in life of TWI. -Familiar with them, and a few others. I had some of the impact on my twig in 1980 that I have reported here several times. I personally have seen problems here and I pitched in to help, as I am doing now. Then there’s you - the only thing you have contributed with your false self vision is a running critical commentary as you are inching your way through one of those books that you previously self censored for years and are now challenged by us to actually read it. -There are several inaccuracies in your several assertions there. Let’s leave it at I have done things and had experiences you know not of… yet. I’ll keep trying to bridge the gaps and fill you in on where my head is at.

Do you mean: Inclined to believe "it" is a good example of a doctrine forbidden academic surety? Or do you mean: Inclined to believe "it" is a doctrine that has surety that is good enough for you? ( where "it" refers to "zero consciousness after rigor mortise" )

What I was talking about was academia forbidding the kind of surety I enjoyed. I gave an example of what is forbidden. The way they forbid it is to demand I prove it in a way they understand and accept. I tell them that is not the way I came to become sure of it. They say (to the effect) we do not accept those kinds of proofs, only our types of proofs. That, results in a prohibition of me building on that truth with them. Ok. I'm done demonstrating why I believe academia forbids seekers from being finders. NOW, we can move on to the other discusion of how can we know for sure that there is no consciousness immediately after death. I mean hours after last breath.

This posting flurry has overwhelmed me, in the sense that as I am slowly composing a text to catch up on responses, 3 more posts go up that I don't see. Some of these get lost in the "scroll up" and it all gets too confusing. I still have a few posts from much earlier to catch up on.

Those questions move off into a new topic; one I'd prefer to discuss later. The "no consciousness after death" notion was offered as an example of academic prohibitions on arriving at an end truth. HOW I arrived at that truth matters not, in my proving the point that academia frowns on the idea that anyone can know anything important for sure, in principle. We can discuss how I arrived at that some other time.

I may have my terms a little confused. It may be there is a better name already to describe what I mentioned. I am very familiar with Kuhn (long story), but I am very unfamiliar with the term "confirmation bias." I have a much better handle on the other terms I used. Thanks, and you have a Merry Christmas. And the New Year can mean some new modes of communication.

I mean reaching the final answers to cosmic religious questions, is forbidden in modern culture. "It can only be an opinion, and no one can know for sure" has assumed Ten Commandments status in our culture. This is magnified in the attitudes you find in top science oriented Universities. I have arrived at knowing that there is no consciousness after death as an absolute truth. That is a big no-no in modern academia. Similarly, I am locked onto the end of my search that found Jesus Christ being raised from the dead, the dead sleep of zero consciousness. Both of these I got from a month of twig and being able to buy the PFAL book in the little Bookstore at Rye, NY. I got these two truths planted for the first time in my life about 3 or 4 months before my first PFAL class. I was a seeker, and these are two truths that I found at the END of my search. I had an open mind during my search, and when my search ended for these issues of life and death, I closed my mind on these issues. That is what I meant when I said "Our culture, and especially academic culture, strictly forbids seekers from being finders."

THANKS ! Merry Christmas !!!

I totally appreciate the tone of this post from you. I’ll try to match it in my response. I reformatted it again, but this time no words were changed or deleted. I just wanted to see it more clearly as you wrote it. Mike..perhaps confirmation bias hinders your objectivity...I'm a musician and have studied and applied various learning methods and confirmation bias can hinder efforts at times. Perhaps detach...detachment is really an effective method in learning breakthroughs where we climb out of a rut that's just become routine. Take yourself out of the equation and maybe that will help. I'm endeavoring to do the same...I'm not talking at you I'm just sharing techniques I use in my various endeavors. I have quite a few irons in the fire and as we all do hit walls often enough...a learning plateau if u will. Just a though and a suggestion that may help. */*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/* The rut I find us all in here is the “Food-Fight Follies” show we put on for the folks at home. It has run it’s course for 20 years and need fixing. The scene at TWI and with old grads who fled TWI is a lot different now that it was 20 years ago. I want help in getting down to productive discussion that can accomplish something substantial for us all. Your use of the term “confirmation bias” has me guessing that your idea of the rut we are in is that I don’t allow people to force a decision to change my mind with their stories and/or evidence. I suspect that progress to you would be me submitting my fundamental beliefs to “critical thinking.” But what I have tried to say many times here is that, when it comes to applying critical thinking skills to PFAL, I finished that stage of my life about 24 years ago. I applied critical thinking to VPW, TWI, PFAL, and the Bible long ago, when I first was witnessed to. I was trained to be a critical science thinker, and right at my start, before I took the class, people were laughing at me for my excessive critical thinking. I was famous for bringing paper and pen to twigs. I brought long lists of questions to meetings that would have a ministry leader visiting. While many around me were making lifelong decisions, I was cranking away at critical thinking. Slowly, over the course of years, the PFAL books and collaterals passed my tests. I adopted all sorts of attitudes during my critical thinking years, and often I was perceived by leaders as on the edge of tripping out with my questioning. I pressed on, in spite of frequent pressures to just join in and quit being so intellectual. There were phases in my critical thinking years where I was quite angry at VPW. It was a roller coaster at times, but by 1998 it all settled down to me accepting the collaterals as my bottom line for inquiry. It was a careful unemotional decision that was carefully built over a course of over 26 years. So when it comes to the issue of the collaterals being at the center of my life, I am no longer trying to be objective. That whole phase is over for me. */*/*/*/* I have never seen an advocate of critical thinking skills have a plan for what to do when something PASSES THE TESTS, and the critical testing phase of it is over. What is there to criticize when something passes all the critical thinking tests? Our culture, and especially academic culture, strictly forbids seekers from being finders. I reject that myopic point of view. A seeker must be prepared to change the game once the sought truth is found. Otherwise, such a seeker is not looking for truth, but for novelty. When a truth is arrived at, confirmation bias is not the big disease that academia sees it as. In science confirmation bias is technically called “Normal Science” and it is a good mode of inquiry. Confirmation bias is good when you are sure of something, but you don’t know HOW sure. Sure can be led to more sure, with the right kinds of inquiry perspective. So, my rut is non-civil conversation, and progress would be us first all recognizing and respecting our differing positions. From there we may be able to work out some applications of exploratory, non-adversarial, conversations that can help those wo left TWI years ago, and those who are in TWI-4 and coming out into the light.

T-Bone, because your thread "TWI the pseudo-Christian cult" is so new, I didn't want to upset it's evolution. I thought I'd respond to one small section of it here. My very first experiences in TWI were totally different than what this verse lays out. There was no flock anywhere near my life in 1971 for any savage wolves to enter. There was nothing but the old drab Catholic Church, and there was the nothing and old drab Protestants, and no flock and no shepherd anywhere to be seen. I was on my own in the drab nothing religions of my culture, and any occult novelties I could find in old bookstores. What I experienced in PFAL and my early twig years was liberating and showed me how the Bible fits for my life. I saw how unsupervised, uneducated, young people with holy spirit could form a local extension of the Body of Christ. I got a relationship with the Father and with the Son out of the deal. All of that is intact, and thriving to this day. I finally did see savage wolves start to move into TWI-1 slowly a few years later, and in 15 years they had ruined the ministry that had set me free. I am still free because I latched onto the Bible and the part of the ministry that was good, and avoided the parts that were not best.

I tried hard to engage with the meat of your post, which I boiled down to: I can’t say for sure but that may be a reason mike wont engage anyone here. He seems to make exceptions for him lecturing, and going on-and-on about his nostalgic experiences, and constructed point of view. Then I responded to that by saying "No, that is not the reason engagement by me is admittedly rare." I'd like to respond further here by saying the situation is evolving, and I think more engagement can happen. I see no benefit to either of us to insist on the extreme adversarial nature of our conversations. Let's see if we have some mutual interests that can benefit by civil conversation. I think we do stand to benefit by changing our modes of engagement.

Merry Christmas, Rocky. :)