Bolshevik

18 minutes ago, waysider said:

I'm right with you on that.

Is it more than just a nonsensical statement?  Or is there some background?

19 minutes ago, waysider said:

Hey, Mr. B.

I think the difficulty here is that your posts are sometimes a bit more open ended than some people would like them to be. People don't  generally like to be left to draw their own conclusions. I mean, that's cool with art and philosophy and sometimes these discussions do evolve in those directions. Personally, I usually see where you're headed, but I'm not everybody. I'm just me.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that, if you try to point the reader to an intended conclusion, it might help.

 

OK. Fire away. I'm ducking for cover now.

There is no basis for rejecting PFAL as God-breathed that does not apply equally to scriptures that have been considered God-breathed since there was a canon.

This statement claims PFAL was God-breathed.  That is out of left field.  (There's a certain poster who may think this, and that motivation appears based on an attachment to VPW - is this statement a personal attack on another poster?)

"apply equally"  - We're taking an out of left field statement about an esoteric class and saying this also applies to a major text in the development human history.

"that have been considered God-breathed since there was canon" - The Bible was not written.  Canon was compiled.  The history of the canon begins with the church see a need among the people due to various heresies popping up.  Are we going back to "like it hasn't been known since the 3rd or 4th century?  Did they make a statement saying "this is God-breathed?" - That evidence should be presented, or would be helpful.  They would be the people to consult.

God-Breathed can easily change meanings in that one sentence.  Not that the meaning is established in the first place.

Are we saying the early church was run by malignant narcissists as a whole?  PFAL was an attempt to ride the coattails of Christianity, not support it.  

Snow on the gas pumps story screams self serving.  "look at me I'm spAcial"  Uninspiring.  There's no revisionist history needed, it speaks for itself.

The story of Christ?  Factual or not doesn't matter.  Hardly narcissistic.  The mechanics of that story are repeated in other stories throughout time.  Love, sacrifice and I'm a sure a lot of other matters.  Ideas that spread among the bottom tiers of society . . . those without power saw something in it.  Eventually those with power had to acknowledge it.

The phrase sounds like click-bait.  So, click click click click click click

For everyone else's reference, I do not accept the idea that The Bible is the nasal ejections of a bearded sky god.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muses

Quote

In modern figurative usage, a muse is a literal person or supernatural force that serves as someone's source of artistic inspiration.

3 minutes ago, waysider said:

You can take people out of The Way but you can't take the Way out of people.

They have to make that decision for themselves. 

Over 20 years of GSC's existence would seem to validate that concept.

The Bible is problematic because everyone around us has been influenced by it.  You don't have to read it.  Or go near it.  It's there.

It's inspiration is unavoidable?

I think this website is evidence that although people openly "reject PFAL" whatever that means, it still pulses through their veins.   Entire lives will be lived without it being fully purged, in spite of best efforts.

Likewise The Bible has been at work for millennia among billions.  

"I'm not this and I'm not that now" . . . *poof* . . . . this sounds like The Law of Believing at work.

If someone else could enlighten me, Raf's argument is on paper only?  It can't be applied to the real world?

12 hours ago, Rocky said:

His own pain? Which w/could account for his meanness. 

Yes his pain, of self-awareness.  

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, getting something now, whatever the cost, because of the inability to consider future benefits from sacrifice.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment

2 hours ago, Raf said:

Stepping back: by what standard do you reject PFAL as "God-breathed," however you define that term? And are you willing to apply that same standard to the 66 books that make up the Holy Bible? 

By what standard to you accept the Magna Carta?  Typically, with uprisings.  With violence over the centuries.

PFAL is pushed with the wooden spoon.  The standard is to alleviate pain.  Accept what is or the pain continues.

Christianity moved with the sword as well.

Did you chose what alphabet you use?  What criteria did you accept it with?

You are zooming in on a phrase making this accept / don't accept binary decision.  Oh depending on definitions this changes things.  No it doesn't.

People and history are not robots.

12 minutes ago, Raf said:

Bolshevik, Everyone understands my terms but you. Stop derailing the thread.

If someone says they didn't know VPW was a sex predator, the burden would be on me to prove that person DID know. Otherwise the best I could do is demonstrate that the person could have or should have known. 

Which has nothing to do with scripture being God-breathed. Again you are derailing the conversation with a tangent to satisfy your obsession with defining the terms of a discussion to the point of making said discussion impossible.

You're not being targeted. Your bulls hit tactic of derailing every damn thread is being called out

I'm going to clarify something for you.

I didn't join your little cult with your silly terms.

You may have collectively agreed to those terms, but they make no sense.  Should I feel left out?

Saying someone was inspired to do something and then making them prove it makes no sense to me. 

1 minute ago, OldSkool said:

I cant say I have a dog in the race between you and Bolshevik but if it's any merit the way he posts is pretty much how he is. I can say for a fact that hes not trolling. Bolsh is both highly educated and intelligent so I think you guys may be doing the dosy do over a personality conflict or something along those lines. 

I come from the perspective The Way International brought people together.  It's my source whether I like it or not.  

I feel there there is a place for logic and reason, and sometimes it simply does not apply.

This use of "god-breathed" is using Way goggles on the world.  I feel the rigidity.

Finding a teapot or a unicorn or a purple dragon is one thing.  

You can't prove The Bible doesn't exist.  You can prove that it does.  It has had a real affect on the real world.  A world infinitely bigger than The Way International.

Is it being implied rejecting PFAL has the same impact as rejecting the Bible?  Are neither escapable?

53 minutes ago, Raf said:

Stop derailing the thread

Your terms seem random and out of thin air.  If there are no rules defining derailment, I am left to feel targeted.

Your opening post is written in the negative, I presented some points, your solution is to scream "Waaa . . . . derailment" . . . which leads me to think there's another game.  

If someone claims "I didn't know VPW was sex predator" where's the burden of proof?  If you can't prove you didn't know, then you knew?

2 minutes ago, Raf said:

The game is you babbling to derail the thread and me refusing to participate in it.

Stop. Derailing. The. Thread.

You built the cult.

You're transplanting demands for "burden of proof" into areas you have not shown even apply.  

People were moved and wrote scriptures.  Prove it? 

If you see a painting, someone was inspired to paint it.  Prove it?

What's the game here?

9 minutes ago, Raf said:

 . . .

"Rebuild all of society" to escape that I just wrote? That's absurd.

 I made a serious statement.   The Bible was alongside the development of the West.

PFAL was not. 

6 minutes ago, Raf said:

Bolshevik, I'm going to try to be polite here:

You derail threads with a skill that puts Mike to shame by trying to reduce everything to definitions that YOU accept, many of which have NOTHING to do with how the rest of the world defines those terms. It is exhausting and has derailed EVERY SINGLE conversation you and I have had. I'm not putting up with it again. 

"Rebuild all of society" to escape that I just wrote? That's absurd. And I will not have this thread derailed before it's even had a chance to start just because you aqre determined to make every thread about your inability to draw a straight line from one concept to the next. Enough. If you don't understand the points being raised, sit back and enjoy the conversation among those of us who do.

 

Somebody had to say it.

No, we understand God-Breathed into Adam and understand Adam didn't really exist.

If many people came up with PFAL, this is a huge problem.  VPW is off the hook, somewhat.  

The evolution of thought included the influences of The Bible and its numerous sources.  

To suggest The Bible is on equal footing with the brainchild of a Corn-husker, this has many issues.  We would have to rebuild all of society to escape.  But how?

Is God-Breathed one of those Mike definitions?  Cause google can't agree on anything.

More riddles.

Which canon?  Is this multiple choice?

PFAL rejects tradition.  Scripture was intended to be read alongside tradition.

PFAL was not written out of self-reflection or an observation of human nature.  

Fine.

There is no basis for rejecting Hitler that does not equally apply to any human being.

47 minutes ago, Mike said:

. . .

Bolshevik, more fun vacation reading for me would be any details you have to your Tower of Babel and SIT idea. 

I often tinker with ideas to better understand what Babel is all about, but I never did much systematic searching on it, compared to what I did with SIT.

For starters Mike, I don't read The Bible as a literal documentation of events.  But as an impression of human behavior by thousands if not millions of people over thousands of years.

I mean, I wouldn't use a protractor on a painting.

14 minutes ago, Charity said:

It's interesting how that works.  Just yesterday, my husband read the following to me from Gabor Mate's book the Myth of Normal (Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture).  He said it reminded him of your last president and I said it reminded me of wierwille. 

"The negative view of self may not always penetrate conscious awareness and may even masquerade as its opposite: high self-regard.  Some people encase themselves in an armored coat of grandiosity and denial of any shortcomings so as not to feel that enervating shame.  That self-puffery is as sure a manifestation of self-loathing as is abject self-deprecation, albeit a much more normalized one.  It is a marker of our culture's insanity that certain individuals who flee from shame into a shameless narcissism may even achieve great social, economic, and political status and success."

Where he got his negative view of self and when did he started developing it would be interesting to know.

Rocky had a thread on Malignant Narcissism and The Bible in The Open Forum.  This is the story of Cain and Abel.  God confronted Cain and Cain would not hear, he wanted what he wanted.  Sam Vaknin has many videos online and a book on the topic, where he argues it begins in infancy due to mistreatment.  (Cain was Eve's firstborn, possibly he was spoiled?)  There's many other sources.  

33 minutes ago, Raf said:

This is a meta-reply that is kind of off-topic but speaks to the larger point of Mike's thesis, which hasbeen the undercurrent of multiple threads. I'll make the point here,  but it A. deserves its own thread and B. that thread belongs in Questioning Faith or whatever we're calling the Oh Shinola corner of GSC these days.

The point is this:

There is no basis for rejecting PFAL as God-breathed that does not apply equally to scriptures that have been considered God-breathed since there was a canon.

That is why you'll never get through to Mike any more than Richard Dawkins, Penn Jillette or I will ever get through to you.

Canon is arbitrary.

Mike has no thesis.  If anything it's attachment anxiety.  VPW HATED Mike.  Just like VPW HATED everyone else.

You appear to be equating PFAL and religion.  Elevating the importance of PFAL and VPW.   Implying Scripture was motivated out of HATE.

Richard Dawkins and Penn/Jillette, whom I admire, are neither here nor there.

42 minutes ago, Raf said:

PFAL has errors and contradictions. So what?

Exactly.  That's not what people care about.  That's not what motivates them.

7 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

his followers would say God...thats what I used to think. Now im thinking he followed his own lusts and those lusts were his god.

I think vpw's deeper motivation was pain.

10 minutes ago, Raf said:

"You're blaming the Bible for slavery..."

 

No, I'm not. Not what I said and cannot be inferred by what I said.

" . . . they all contain massive errors that disqualify them from being anything other than the scribblings of ignorant men who could have guided us away from people owning each other . . "

okay . . . I was unclear

You're saying the writer's could have done something they didn't do.  

Mark has false geography . . . who gives a hoot?  What does that change?  What is the alternative?

Mike is coming from a place of VPW a$$-loving.  Your position is mysterious and that's what makes it interesting.

20 minutes ago, Raf said:

. . .

Funny thing is, I now put them ALL on the same plane, but not because they're divine. I put them on thecsame plane because they all contain massive errors that disqualify them from being anything other than the scribblings of ignorant men who could have guided us away from people owning each other but instead made damn sure cheeseburgers were not on the menu.  . . .

 

Is there a thread dedicated to this idea?  

Turn on the radio.  No lyrics makes sense.  

(You're blaming The Bible for slavery among other things . . . I assume there's some hyperbole here)

27 minutes ago, OldSkool said:

Facebook would suck without likes...well suck more...

People are doing it on their phones for text messages now.  It's spreading and needs to be stopped.