johnj

VP's plagiarism would get any high school or college student an F on the paper or course, and would get a prof censured or fired. So how can anyone defend VP for doing even worse? But there is a deeper issue here. In PFAL (class and book p. 119-120) VP makes a big deal about saying he took his 3,000 books to the dump and studied the Bible alone. Then in the intro to RTHST VP plainly said that he "put aside all I had heard and thought out myself, and I started anew with the Bible as my handbook as well as my textbook." He is clearly saying that he did not use any other book in writing RTHST. Yet, most of the book is plainly plagiarized. This is a bald-faced lie. VP never once in RTHST ever mentions the name of Stiles or Bullinger, who he stole most of RTHST from. In the earlier 3rd ed. the intro vaguely mentions that VP met a man who taught him something (Stiles, but you'd only know this if you knew the part of the story VP was hiding). But all later editions delete this and instead say that VP used the Bible alone. This conscious deletion from the intro reinforces how VP was consciously lying about his plagiarism.

VP "wrote" 3 kinds of books. + plagiarized (stolen) material-- examples are given above in my earlier post; LOTS of it + chapters ghost written by other people for VP (which means he didn't write it himself)- like Chap 1 of JCNG, JCOP, etc. The intro of JCNG actually mentions the author of Chap 1, which was a real shock, because VP didn't like to credit others + stuff he made up on the fly. Most of the peripherals, magazine articles, plus much of JCNG were VP speaking off the cuff and people transcribing it for him. Really shallow stuff. For example, JCNG started as a tape (I think #295 or 299). If you listen to the tape, it's obvious he didn't put any research into it and was talking off the top of his head. If you read JCNG closely, it's also clear there (at least if you have any background in reading competent theological books) that it's really shallow and slipshod. There are very important passages that he sloughs off with just a couple of sentences. But listening to the tape is a real eye-opener. The tone of voice, the content, and everything are like a grade school kid telling his mom what he saw in the back yard that day, which is transcribed and passed off as a biology text. The shallowness on such a serious topic is disgusting. It's easy to produce voluminous "books" if you teach or preach a few times a week (as most pastors do) and have somebody to transcribe your teachings, preachings and/or ramblings. Almost nothing is footnoted, except for some of the stuff other people wrote for him. The stuff VP babbled and plagiarized (which is most of it) has almost zero footnotes. On another topic- it's true that VP got eye cancer first, and it spread to the liver. The death certificate can be found at www.abouttheway.org (it used to be www.abouttheway.com ) A friend of VP signed the certificate. While that may call into question its veracity, I would assume it is accurate nonetheless. In PFAL VP said that illness is caused by one's own negative believing. If VP's teaching on negative believing is true, then VP himself was a very negative believer and caused his own illness and death. I would have liked to see TWI be honest and either publically say that VP caused his own death (as VP said a mother caused the death of her child by being worried that he would have an accident), or else reject VP's teaching on this. But public honesty and transparency was never a habit of the upper levels of TWI.

When it comes to VPW and plagiarism, it is easier to list what VP did not steal than what he did. The monograph by Juedes and Valusek "Will the Real Author Please Stand Up?" quotes several examples of plagiarim, with the original author in 1 column and VP in the column next to it. Here are examples in addition to Stiles and RTHST: + EW Kenyon, the Father and His Family --- VP How to Be a Christian (New Dynamic Church) + EW Bullinger, Selected Writings , How to Enjoy the Buble --- VP, Are the Dead Alive Now + Bullinger, The Knowledge of God --- VP, The Counsel of the Lord (The Bible Tells Me So) + Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible --- VP, Rediscovering Figures of Speech (The Way Mag 1984) + Bullinger, How to Enjoy the Bible --- VP, Search the Scriptures (TWM 1984) + Bullinger, The Church Epistles --- VP, God's Magnified Word + Bullinger, The Giver and His Gifts --- VP, Receiving the Holy Spirit Today In the case of RTHST, almost the whole book was stolen from Stiles and Bullinger. Juedes also wrote a parallel column comparison showing which chapters were stolen from which authors. RTHST "grew" as he found more authors to steal from, which is obvious if you compare early editions of RTSHT. It's also clear VP plagiarized from the very beginning (1953 at least) to the very end of his life (1984), a life long lie. Plagiarism isn't just "learning" from people. It's quoting or paraphrasing them in a book or article without citing the source. The lie is that people think you're an originator instead of a copier. He would have been fired from an faculty; instead he's admired and nearly worshiped by many.