VPW and the Snowstorm - What do you believe?

[socks]

It's no secret we disagree, Mike. :) To me it's simply a matter of principle but nothing's lost or gained by what i see as this past disruption of principle relating to honesty and quality in work.

Your point of an "academic" perspective on this is facetious and misleading, IMO. Your placing that context around the issue doesn't relate to the issue.

Copyright law doesn't exist in an artificial vacuum, created for circumstance, court cases or licensing. It reflects a reality, recognition of ownership. (hold that thought for a sec, more scintillating blather to follow on it....)

It can only be said a 1,000 times before it starts to sound stale - if none of this copyright stuff was relevant to the books, than it was unnecessary to inscribe the "©" to any of the books. Giving that status to the work sets it into a context that copyright laws govern. Period.

In fact though (scintillating comments to follow!!!) the principles that copyright law attempt to address are in affect with or without the laws.

A child may need a rule to not take another child's toy without asking them first, so that he can learn to respect other children, but the child must learn in their own heart the truth of that so that when there's no one watching to enforce the rule, they will act respectfully.

Inserting authorship and God's permission into this doesn't align with how VPW conducted business in this arena.

"God's Word" doesn't benefit from being copyrighted.

On that topic, it's been written that "Jesus never wrote a book"...now I see why. But if He had I doubt He would have avoided giving credit to His Father, whose Words He was given. In fact, He did do that when He spoke, didn't He? So even Jesus verbally cited His sources.

The context for appropriate action in this topic isn't academic requirements, or meal service.

VPW made that clear when he copyrighted his books and sold them. He chose the context, not you or I. He owed it to everyone involved to progress with an honesty that would be above reproach and not subject to the meandering musings of his audience, years later.

As they say, you dance with the one you brung. Or something like that. Or was it Rocky:

"You wanna dance, you gotta pay the band, you understand? If you wanna borrow, you gotta pay the man. Hey, I ain't emotionally involved..."

And I'm not. He was wrong and I can sleep with that understanding, quite soundly as with the fact we disagree.

[Mike]

It's no secret we disagree, Mike. :) To me it's simply a matter of principle but nothing's lost or gained by what i see as this past disruption of principle relating to honesty and quality in work.

Your point of an "academic" perspective on this is facetious and misleading, IMO. Your placing that context around the issue doesn't relate to the issue.

I don't think it's that easily dismissed. In schooling and in academic research, proper crediting is useful and necessary. But that was not the setting we were in. The word plagiarism refers, as far as I know, to the academic setting. Copyright infringement refers to the marketplace. That's the best I know of those twow words.

Copyright law doesn't exist in an artificial vacuum, created for circumstance, court cases or licensing. It reflects a reality, recognition of ownership. (hold that thought for a sec, more scintillating blather to follow on it....)

If one is willing to put spiritual blinders on, then ownership of ideas makes sense. If the blinders are taken off, then God is the real owner of all that is good. Period.

It can only be said a 1,000 times before it starts to sound stale - if none of this copyright stuff was relevant to the books, than it was unnecessary to inscribe the "©" to any of the books. Giving that status to the work sets it into a context that copyright laws govern. Period.

Not-so-Period. There are reasons to inscribe the "©" other than what you are attempting to limit it to. If they were not placed on there then others could come along and steal them, and disallow their intended use: our blessing. The the "©" indicated the mix and the filtering that God had wrought in teaching Dr what to present to us. God is the owner and He had Dr protect the final product with the "©" symbol.

In fact though (scintillating comments to follow!!!) the principles that copyright law attempt to address are in affect with or without the laws.

A child may need a rule to not take another child's toy without asking them first, so that he can learn to respect other children, but the child must learn in their own heart the truth of that so that when there's no one watching to enforce the rule, they will act respectfully.

Inserting authorship and God's permission into this doesn't align with how VPW conducted business in this arena.

Hey, if it's little old me that does the inserting, then I'd agre with you. But if it's GOD ALMIGHTY who inserted Himself then that does constitute a Higher Authority than the governments of men.

"God's Word" doesn't benefit from being copyrighted.

Sez who? I think it does!

On that topic, it's been written that "Jesus never wrote a book"...now I see why. But if He had I doubt He would have avoided giving credit to His Father, whose Words He was given. In fact, He did do that when He spoke, didn't He? So even Jesus verbally cited His sources.

He chose partners to write for him. Dr didn't crank the printing presses, he chose others to print for him.

The context for appropriate action in this topic isn't academic requirements, or meal service.

VPW made that clear when he copyrighted his books and sold them. He didn't sell them on the open market, just to us at cost. He chose the context, not you or I. He owed it to everyone involved to progress with an honesty that would be above reproach and not subject to the meandering musings of his audience, years later.

Actually ADAN was on the open market for a short time.

As they say, you dance with the one you brung. Or something like that. Or was it Rocky:

"You wanna dance, you gotta pay the band, you understand? If you wanna borrow, you gotta pay the man. Hey, I ain't emotionally involved..."

And I'm not. He was wrong and I can sleep with that understanding, quite soundly as with the fact we disagree.

He rightly blessed my life and many others back then, and in years to come. The objections here will not prevail. Nothing prevailed against them back then, and I'll bet they out survive us all in the future.

Edited January 26, 2009 by Mike

[WordWolf]

I disagree.

The key is - appropriately

Who is to say what is and is not appropriately credited?

Since God Almighty told us to obey man's laws, I'd say God Almighty agrees

the legal expectation of citation is "appropriate" credit/

In the academic realm and in the market place, the meaning of "appropriately" is fairly well defined. In those settings there are authorities to answer my question as to what is appropriate.

But those were not the settings in which we were served that material. It was in the setting of a meal from our Father that we were served good food.

The credits were done rather inappropriately if they were to satisfy the academic community, and if the earlier authors were to have brought Dr to court over marketplace infringements, I would not be at all surprised if in that setting he be judged liable.

But on the table we were served, in the setting of a spiritual Father with His family, the earlier authors were IMHO appropriately credited... remotely and without distraction.

FALSE.

That's easy for anyone who owns a copy of "Babylon Mystery Religion".

The ENTIRE BOOK was based on the (PUBLIC DOMAIN) book "The Two Babylons."

It's properly annotated all through the book- Woodruff credits Hislop

correctly in every case. And NO ONE ever claimed that was a problem to read.

Your opinion doesn't match the evidence OR any honest definitions.

(This should be no surprise by now.)

***

...and if revelation was involved (and I'm betting my life there was) then that would serve as permission... from the ultimate Author.

God can't contradict Himself. He told us to obey the laws of the land.

Where God's people defied authorities in their day, they expected to go to

jail-and they did. Look over Jeremiah's life to see what it's like for a man

of God to "buck the trend" like you suggest about vpw.

***

And a marketplace side note (AND THIS IS NOT A MINOR POINT):

I think every one of those earlier authors (and/or their estates) were more than compensated by all the free publicity they got from Dr's actions. There couldn't have been a better commercial promotional agent for them if they had tried to hire one.

It's unoriginal and dishonest for you to keep saying this,

but what else is new?

First of all, vpw had classes of BG Leonard and Stiles' materials taught all over the US.

How often does he mention "I'm taking sessions 9-12 directly from Leonard and Stiles?"

We can all count to ZERO.

So, first of all, this "free publicity" is a fiction.

It's easy to see, since you claimed-in the SAME POST- that he left out the

legally-appropriate citations.

Second of all, plagiarism is illegal even IF you give it all sorts of

qualifiers. "No one was hurt" "He benefitted the people he plagiarized"

and various other lies don't change that.

[waysider]

"The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round

'round and 'round

'round and 'round"

[Mark Clarke]

Guess where I learned this clever trick?

Yeah, in The Way Ministry. Witnessing and Undershepharding if I remember correctly.

The way it works is you bring up an anticipated objection and then address it before the other party has an opportunity to bring it up themselves.

Obviate

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obviation

You mean like this?

You wrote: If PFAL is the new God-breathed Word, Mike, how do you explain the glaring errors in it?

Now, really, what do you expect my answer is? Do you want me to say: "Sure there are errors, but I close my eyes to them."???

If I were to try to explain why there are errors in God-breathed PFAL I'd be an idiot or sorts.

Of course, my real answer (you expect this, right?) is that I disagree with the notion that there are errors!

Everybody's going around in circles about whether or not it was plagiarism or copyright infringement for VP to use the words/writings/ideas of others. Setting that aside for a moment, let us consider a more crucial question. Mike claims that God gave VP revelation as to what points he should keep and use, and what points he should reject from others' writings. I brought up a few very specific points which VP adapted, which are based on completely false statements. Not differences of opinion about theologies, but proven matters of FACT that he had wrong in his writings. If God gave him revelation as to what to use from other people's teachings, how did these get missed? Regardless of whether he "appropriately" credited his sources, the fact that he took statements from those sources without even checking to see if the FACTS were right, leads me to question whether indeed God revealed to him what parts to appropriate.

The points in question are in the Doctrinal Forum, BTW. The Kingdom of God / Kingdom of Heaven question is in its own thread, and three others (Throughly vs. thoroughly, lambano vs. dechomai, and holy spirit UPON vs. holy spirit IN) are in another thread called More Blatant PFAL Errors. You don't need to get into a lengthy debate - they're simple questions. How do you deal with these things if PFAL is "God Breathed"? I don't see much difference between saying "Sure there are errors, but I close my eyes to them" and "I see no errors because I close my eyes to them."

[socks]

Well, the topic of "ownership" applies to everything. Mike. On that we agree. As with a person who writes a book about the stars, he doesn't own the constellations, nor the information, he's simply learning and reporting. We've already gone through all this before, and it's all easy for the interested reader to draw their own conclusions.

A person doesn't need to fall on either side or inbetween on this topic to enjoy the blessings of the Word of God, be it in PFAL, directly at the source, the Bible or any work based on it and from it. Recognizing these issues for what they are doesn't change the information, that should be given an honest look by anyone who wants to.

[potato]

<snip>

And a marketplace side note (AND THIS IS NOT A MINOR POINT):

I think every one of those earlier authors (and/or their estates) were more than compensated by all the free publicity they got from Dr's actions. There couldn't have been a better commercial promotional agent for them if they had tried to hire one.

your opinion on this point is irrelevant, as it is up to the original authors to determine what they believe is fair compensation BEFORE their work is copied, and up to the courts afterward. it's not up to you to decide that publicity is enough compensation. that argument is used far too often by ignorant people to excuse infringement on other's legal rights.

[Mike]

Well I agree we're going round and round. Some of that is due to the fact that several people are involved and to some degree each round can be associated with each participant. I think some is due to some not wanting to accept what’s been set forth and trying again and again to ram it out of credence.

I'm about done here on this issue.

Just a small few points left.

I think everyone can see that IF revelation is involved, I have a consistent position. A lot of the discussion seems to center on the copyright issue disproving revelation, but the copyright issue is looked at from the position of non-revelation to begin with. What’s being “proved” has already been assumed.

On the matter of strict legality, God tells us to obey the laws of men as much as is possible. But, clearly, His set of laws prevail over man’s in case of a conflict, just like when there’s a conflict between State and Federal laws, and the Feds are constitutionally identified as having the upper hand.

Again, Mark, what is a factual error to you can be seen as not at all the case when you use differing methods to read the writings. This shouldn’t be too hard to see. We were shown how unbelieving scholars can read errors into the ancient scriptures by way of their methodology, right?

After that I see only one more point to be made. I’ve once posted on this before, so I may go and search for that, rather than re-compose it. It’s an interesting point as to why God would do it in this seemingly convoluted way. It has to do with copyrighting God’s Word and injection into the public domain, and it’s not been brought up here in several years. I’l be looking for it.

[waysider]

Again, Mark, what is a factual error to you can be seen as not at all the case when you use differing methods to read the writings. This shouldn’t be too hard to see. We were shown how unbelieving scholars can read errors into the ancient scriptures by way of their methodology, right?

Differing methods?

What, pray tell, might be these "differing methods" one might use to explain the errors in genealogy that Ham pointed out?

[Ham]

that's why I pulled that thread up.. about 42 pages worth of it.. we could painstakingly go over each issue there not properly or logically addressed if need be.. starting with the genealogy issue..

this thread is supposed to be about the vicster's snow storm he tried pulling over our eyes..

[Mike]

Differing methods?

What, pray tell, might be these "differing methods" one might use to explain the errors in genealogy that Ham pointed out?

#1 One method would be meekness. I alluded to this before in my response to Mark in Post #633 when I said "We were shown how unbelieving scholars can read errors into the ancient scriptures by way of their methodology, right? " We were taught this in the class, remember? The assumption must be made before beginning that the text is right. Then you look for the answers on THAT side of the tracks, not on the side that you all are on, assuming that it's full of errors.

#2 Another would be being familiar with ALL the places in the writings where the target topic comes up. This takes years, and it must be done with #1 in mind.

#3 Word studies - key words that are employed in the target topic need to be defined in terms of how they are used elsewhere WITHIN the PFAL writings, not how they are defined outside the writings. This too takes much time, especially considering we don't have a concordance for the PFAL writings.

There are others. I've listed these here many times in years past, but thanks for not seeing them, cuz it gives me a chance to repeat them for newcomers.

Edited January 26, 2009 by Mike

[Bolshevik]

does anyone know the date of supposed snow on pumps event offhand? (my books are deep in storage)

[RumRunner]

LOL - mine are in deep storage too - somewhere in a landfill...where they belong

does anyone know the date of supposed snow on pumps event offhand? (my books are deep in storage)

[waysider]

#1 One method would be meekness. I alluded to this before in my response to Mark in Post #633 when I said "We were shown how unbelieving scholars can read errors into the ancient scriptures by way of their methodology, right? " We were taught this in the class, remember? The assumption must be made before beginning that the text is right. Then you look for the answers on THAT side of the tracks, not on the side that you all are on, assuming that it's full of errors.

#2 Another would be being familiar with ALL the places in the writings where the target topic comes up. This takes years, and it must be done with #1 in mind.

#3 Word studies - key words that are employed in the target topic need to be defined in terms of how they are used elsewhere WITHIN the PFAL writings, not how they are defined outside the writings. This too takes much time, especially considering we don't have a concordance for the PFAL writings.

There are others. I've listed these here many times in years past, but thanks for not seeing them, cuz it gives me a chance to repeat them for newcomers.

Excuse me, Mike

That's utter nonsense.

The genealogy errors are simply that----errors.

It shouldn't take "years" or a "PFAL concordance" to recognize that.

Approaching the text with an presumption that it MUST be right or wrong, is faulty research methodology.

[Mike]

Approaching the text with an presumption that it MUST be right or wrong, is faulty research methodology.

Not necessarily.

If a researcher has ALREADY determined that the text is right from previous research, then current searches can use that previous result to help guide the work.

Similarly, if the text has previously been found by a researcher to be faulty, then the methods I suggested would not be used.

You're assuming that all research has as its goal finding the text right or wrong. That's not the case with me, and it's not the case with others here.

I start out with the assumption that the text is right, and an apparent error needs to be reconciled, so I keep searching until a satiffactory answer is found.

Others here start out with the assumption that the text is wrong, and they work it until they think they've demonstrated this by finding an apparent error, and that's where they halt their search.

It sounds to me that you've only thought this through from one side. It's like you're too emotionally invested with the idea that the text is wrong, and this prevents you from seeing the other possible side. That possibility offends you so much you don't give it enough time and brainpower to see what I'm talking about.

[RumRunner]

Yeah but WS we gotta keep this thread going. I haven't had this much entertainment in a long time. Reading Mike's posts is like watching the Three Stooges build a nuclear submarine.

Excuse me, Mike

That's utter nonsense.

The genealogy errors are simply that----errors.

It shouldn't take "years" or a "PFAL concordance" to recognize that.

Approaching the text with an presumption that it MUST be right or wrong, is faulty research methodology.

[waysider]

Not necessarily.

If a researcher has ALREADY determined that the text is right from previous research, then current searches can use that previous result to help guide the work.

Similarly, if the text has previously been found by a researcher to be faulty, then the methods I suggested would not be used.

You're assuming that all research has as its goal finding the text right or wrong. That's not the case with me, and it's not the case with others here.

I start out with the assumption that the text is right, and an apparent error needs to be reconciled, so I keep searching until a satiffactory answer is found.

Paraphrased straight out of PFAL

That's exactly what Wierwille did. He made up his mind what HE thought it should say and wouldn't relent until he found a way to fit it with his own thinking. "The Word MUST say it's Ok to have sex with someone else's wife, kids, it just HAS to."

Others here start out with the assumption that the text is wrong, and they work it until they think they've demonstrated this by finding an apparent error, and that's where they halt their search.

It sounds to me that you've only thought this through from one side. It's like you're too emotionally invested with the idea that the text is wrong, and this prevents you from seeing the other possible side. That possibility offends you so much you don't give it enough time and brainpower to see what I'm talking about.

Actually, I'm not at all "emotiomally" invested in it. It's a matter of common sense and proper research protocol. As such, it's really devoid of emotion. What does offend me somewhat, though, is your constant insistence there must be something wrong with my ability to exercise "brainpower".

[Mike]

You wrote: "What does offend me somewhat, though, is your constant insistence there must be something wrong with my ability to exercise 'brainpower.'"

How can I more politely suggest that I think you missed something?

[waysider]

You wrote: "What does offend me somewhat, though, is your constant insistence there must be something wrong with my ability to exercise 'brainpower.'"

How can I more politely suggest that I think you missed something?

Simple

Show me what it is you think I missed and let that speak for itself.

[Mike]

Simple

Show me what it is you think I missed and let that speak for itself.

I think I did that already, so let's let the record speak for itself.

I gotta go to work.

[Twinky]

Wow, I just looked in on this thread after washing my hands of it; felt like I needed some humor.

No change here, since my last look.

The same old plagiarism arguments...

Arguments about copyrights...

Hey, nobody mentioned a BIBLIOGRAPHY, which reputable works of research almost always include in addition to the footnotes/copyright info.

(Just giving this merry-go-round another twiddle...)

Lest we forget-

this thread is about what we now believe about VPW's snowstorm story.

As far as I know, snowflakes are neither copyrightable nor patentable.

[RumRunner]

Actually I mentioned both bibliography and footnotes quite some posts ago - Mike publicly posted that they were a waste of his time as he didn't want to take the time to read footnotes which [reworded by me] might have interfered with reading Vic's most holy drunken babbling

Hey, nobody mentioned a BIBLIOGRAPHY, which reputable works of research almost always include in addition to the footnotes/copyright info.

[Twinky]

Sorry, RR, musta missed that. Got lost under a drift of copyright complaints.

[seaspray]

If we believe that throughout the Scriptures we have the words of God and not of man, many difficulties will disappear. We must allow the Divine Author the rights and privileges claimed and operated by every human author, namely, that He may quote, readapt or repeat in varied forms His own previously written or spoken words. God could have used other forms had He chosen to do so, but it has pleased Him to repeat His own word or words, introducing them in different contexts, with new applications and connotations. Thus it obligates us to study the context, the paragraph and the section where the same word appears and where it was used previously, to see if its usage is in a new sense or not. RHST pg 223

Mike, doesn't this paragraph from Receiving the Holy Spirit Today essentially sum up, or describe, what we have in book and magazine form from the Way Ministry?

[potato]

defending plagiarism and copyright infringement because god is the author is about the dumbest argument in defense of theft that I've ever heard.

KJV is already public domain, as are many other versions of the bible. what is not public domain (owned by the people), nor owned by god is people's commentary and organization thereof that goes with the scripture they use when they write an article or book or class syllabus.

good heavens, by your arguments I could reprint any of twi's books and syllabi I want. wanna see how well that flies when their lawyers come after me?