Mike

It was going in many directions before I stepped in.

My library has all sorts of the teachers VPW had. I have collected more than the ones that were easily available at the Way Bookstore. I don't filter those things out at all. */*/*/* So glad you asked about the re-writing. Psalm 12:6-7 The words of the LORD are pure words: As silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. First the revelation comes, and it is then spoken, and then later put into written form. This last step can include finding better ways to say it, or include new research, new light on the topic. It is only in the "divine dictation" model of revelation writing that your objection makes sense. VPW taught in the Thess. Univ of Life that generally the Word did not come by divine dictation.

It means that free will is BIOLOGICAL. (and not spiritual)

I used the words "a bit of" to mitigate my statement. All forms of neuroscience see that there is lots of confabulating going on in both brain damage victims and in normal people. The older schools of thought look at the confabulation as incidental, while smaller but very vocal schools of thought are looking at the confabulation as fundamental. I kid you not. It is, again, neuroscience coming around to agree with the Bible on consciousness, and "all men are liars." So, I may have been expressing a minority point of view, but it is one that is growing. But one by one, the unique things of the human mind are turning up to not be so unique after all, and "man has no preeminence over the beasts." In the Bible man's mind is portrayed as egotistical and self boasting. and not possessing the great wisdom it likes to think. Neuroscience is finding this to be the case in many ways.

.Thanks for the link! That is the kind of direction my free will research is heading in. I see free will as being like a muscle. It can be out of shape and weak. There are all kinds of tricks that we can do to strengthen it, and make it function again. I have been picking up tips for my research from links like this, and in groups that specialize in quitting smoking or changing eating habits. In addition to being LIKE a muscle, my research is indicating that free will is IDENTICAL to learning; just complicated, self-directed learning.

I try my best to not consider what other people say what they think was on the mind of VPW. What I have learned to focus on are his printed writings that went through a bunch of filters (including holy spirit in many of his editors), and re-writings over the years. His recorded teachings are a secondary focus for me, and after that I find it useful to not do very much considering about him. It matters almost nothing to me what you think VPW's "obsessions" were. It matters almost nothing to me what VPW's actual "obsessions" were. It took me years to find that this way of thinking is best. I choose to look at what went most right in VPW's life: the collaterals. I offer this as an alternative to the mental rut many are stuck in here.

Did you mean to talk about your great interest in free will versus determinism?

LoL. How to NOT do a new thread: stick a distracting tangent right into the initiating thread. LoL Is it too late for you to revamp your initiating post with an edit? Just remove all mention to the music coordinator and start talking about free will.

Yes, I think you got it right here. I was told much same thing point-blank after attending for years. They were thankful that I did not cause trouble. Which reminds me of a story that happened there. When I first arrived I only mentioned briefly my Biblical background to one of the grad students, but word got around very fast that I was a believer. Still, I played it cool, because I wanted to learn, and only once per year would I comment on something Biblical. After I won their friendship, two of the grad students confided in me that they had been prepared for me to be a religious nut when I first arrived. They said that before my arrival there was a steady stream of nutcases who wanted to invade the school and the department and set them straight on some New Age truth or something. These nutcases would set up shop in a class or in the hallways or outdoor gardens, and preach their better forms of enlightenment. Because UCSD was doing cutting edge work on the brain and A.I. the news media was often rustling up the nutcasess to harass these brain scientists. So, they were thankful that I did not fit into that mold, and said so. They also said that they were getting a weird sense that I was SHIELDING them from the steady stream of nutcases that would crash their groups. It seemed that my presence there was keeping the nuts out, they said. This went on for years. Finally, as 1998 approached, the group was winding down, the professors were thinking of other things for the next year, and my life was changing. There was a sense that the club was over. Then, in the last meeting of the semester, along comes one of the nutcases to preach to the group. This was after SEVEN YEARS of none of them showing up. One of my grad student friends came to me during the meeting and asked what was wrong with my shields!?? He said that this was the kind of nut I had been shielding them from. I give God all the credit. I did nothing to shield anyone. I just wanted to give glory to God and learn, and if I could teach them anything…. that would be great also.

Not really. My posts here are mostly responding to others. My few posts generate LOTS of interest. I see how dead it is in here during the months I am not posting. Rocky, why do you think you not heard here on this. If you were correct, and all I do is post blather, they why do others want to talk about my blather so much? Why do you run away from it and scream "Turn Mike OFF" to the others? What is bothering you? Why can't you tolerate other opinions to be near to you. Does what I post threaten your viability?

You sound like academia here. Sorry, you don't get spared. If God can't verify to you when you got the truth then maybe you got the wrong god. If you got the god of academia, you are NOT ALLOWED to have truth or to know if if it lands in your lap.

I mentioned in another response that I did some work on confabulation, and posted much of it here in 2002.

I think we ALL have the ability to turn on and off our critical thinking skills. Every time we watch a science fiction or comedy movie we turn off our critical thinking skills, and then turn them back on during the commercial, or after the movie is over.

Actually there is something to that. I have seen how previously smart men of God turned to be quite stupid when they no longer had an assist from holy spirit. I also see that IQ can be distracted by hate, and that happens a lot here. But I have no need to convince skeptics of my past informal educations. I have the ideas to swing here, and need not have any pat on the back from people. None of you were able to believe me before I mentioned UCSD, and none can believe me now: no big deal to me.

No. That looks too formal. What I joined was very informal. I never signed anything. One of the reasons for it was for graduate students to have a chance presenting their work, and to cross pollinate ideas around the different departments. It was very informal. There were two years when the meetings became an accredited class for a semester for those grad students who registered for it, but that is as formal as it got. The whole ides was for ideas to flow unfettered by formal structures of any sort. My being allowed to attend was part of that informality. The very first time I posted here included some of the material that I contributed. It was on compulsive lying. We often studied cases involving brain damage. In a wide variety of different injuries to the brain, a common symptom can emerge: confabulation. That is a nice medical term for profuse lying, ridiculous lying. That confabulation would show up from all different sorts of different injuries was odd. I remember the group leader often wondering out loud "So, what about confabulation in normals?" That sounded Biblical to me so I did a study on lying for the group around 1996, and in 2002 I posted a bunch of the results here. The name of the thread was "Innies and Outies - All Men Are Liars." I don't know if that thread still exists. I can dredge it up from my archives if it was deleted in the band-width wars.

I mentioned that I had a short conversation on the phone. The person at the other end was a super star in brain science and could tell what I knew and did not know from my ability to hold a good conversation. I learned this way of talking from a lifetime of experiences in the tech world. Another factor that I forgot to mention is that Universities are often trying to include the local community in a lot of it's activities. It looks good at times when applying for grants if the University can demonstrate local community participation. This was another reason I was invited to join. In the next 7 years I had lots of opportunities to demonstrate that I understood what was going on and could contribute at times.

Here is how it works, issue by issue. I am not talking about a universally closed mind. We need to have an open mind while we are searching for the truth on an issue. HOWEVER, once we find the truth on that issue, we need to close our mind and stop the searching, so we can use the truth we found. An open mind can let in error. This is tolerated in the search phase, but not necessary to tolerate once the truth (on that issue) is found. Most scholars do not believe the truth can be found, so they always want an open mind, and can see no use for a closed one, one closed and containing the truth.

By conversing on the telephone for 10 minutes. I had worked for years in an atom smasher and I knew the lingo.

I simply saw an inte3resting article in Scientific American and that the author lived in San Diego, whom I telephoned and was lucky to have a pick-up. I said I was interested in the article and the topic for many years, and we batted it around a bit. Next thing I hear is "We're starting a new club to brainstorm on research techniques. Please feel free to attend." From that I became a charter member of the EPL group. That stood for Experimental Philosophical Laboratory. We met in the Philosophy Department, and later moved it to the Cog Sci Dept. God opened massive doors and I got to hang out with the world's most top flight brain scientists, with occasional medical people chiming in. When I say that modern neuroscience has come around to agree with the Bible that the mind of man is not all it is cracked up to be, I know what I am talking about.

The fonts I put in bold face are a bold faced lie that someone on the board here concocted. I was not part of a study of any particular disorder. It was NOT medical in any way. The main ring leader was Nobel Prizewinner Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA. It was brain scientists trying to figure out how NORMAL brains worked. Sure, we looked often at damaged brains that the medical people would tell us about. Some of the visiting scientists were medical people. We looked into early A.I. and all sorts of things having to do with the brain. "Mental health MDs don’t do science club study groups with unqualified participants for fun" Well basic research scientists DO allow un-credentialed participants if they can demonstrate competence, which I did. This is especially true for frontier science where breakthroughs are rare and eagerly sought. They really are looking out of the box thinking, and un-credentialed interested parties can be of great assistance here. I am not inclined at all to tell all the details of all my stories. I only brought up my UCSD experiences to back up my claim that neuroscience these days sees human consciousness as a bit of a confabulation.

Busted! Well I'll just have to pick the pieces and try again.

Is your mind totally closed on that idea, that there can NEVER be a reason to close your mind?

It was my response to a question. If I respond to a poster's question then they feel obligated to come back to PFAL with me. Since I just responded to your question, can't you now feel the tug to come back to PFAL?

Oh johniam! Hello, do you hear me JOHNIAM? johniam ! He doesn't answer. Maybe he doesn't like you calling him my boy? What brought that on? Maybe I should let you two settle it here on this thread or on a music director thread. Let me know when you have the situation under control.

There was one grad student who could follow me some. But I was there to learn, not to witness, but I did a little of it wisely. Because I witnessed only very sparingly over a 7 year span, the few times I did were heard loudly. I respected them and them letting me hang out, like a groupie. They respected me as I gradually showed them my hand. It is against the religion of the academy to think that confirmation bias can have some benefits at some times, so no, I kept that close to my vest. Also, I doubt if the occasional benefits of a closed mind ever came up either.