So_crates

A lot of which goes back to we want to become a nation of morons. This all started long ago, when the war on intellectualism began. Go to your school yards, who's made fun of? The jocks? No the nerds. The people who would one day figure out every modern convenience we have. The people who would take us to the moon. Then on the job, you think the boss is going to hire someone smarter than him? Nah, too much of a threat. So stupider and stupider people move up the rank and files, looking for even stupider people to hire. Soon, people will be in important postitions that won't be able to find their backsides with both hands and radar. Look at tv. Who do we celebrate? Jerry Springer. What are our sitcoms about? Normal life, like in the 50s? No, about freaks and flakes. These are our role models, people: Freaks and flakes. Its a choice we as a nation made. Now were starting to see where it leads. SoCrates

In the original: "Lie to me. Tell me how much you miss me and those wild times we had together. Tell me you believe my line of bull and that my contacting you is the first step in your returning to da verd." SoCrates

I agree, Waysider. No matter where I went: WOW Twig Limb Meetings The ministry seemed to be at war with one thing (I imagine the thing that most threatened leadership): The ego. SoCrates

To paraphrase what David letterman said about Hollywood: "Da Vey? High school with money." SoCrates

In many aspects that's true. Much of socialist doctrine says that the society should be led by enlightened despots, people who have somehow escaped Maslow's ghost and are fit to run the society. What they fail to mention to the masses is the enlightened wonders see the masses as no more then cattle to be herded. Too stupid to understand the greatness of the gift that's being laid before them. Translate that into ministry terms and you have the same situation. SoCrates

In this scenerio, nobody's needs are met: not the victimizer, not the victim. SoCrates

Oh, okay, I'm apologize for the misunderstanding. Why do they do that? The ministry being evil, wanted to bring out the most primitive element in its leaders, which doesn't understand good or evil, that brute beast aspect of us. SoCrates

There are two ways people define themselves: One is to lookoutward. You let the world around you define you. That's why some people always need friends around: to reflect back who they are. The other way is to look inwardly and define yourself that way. Most people can't do that. It requires looking over the edge and asking what am I capable of? How do I define ethics and virtue? What do they mean to me? I'm of the latter. Inwardly directed. In my life I've left my home town several times: I've just pick up and moved to Cleveland, Ohio, Saginaw, MI, and Kissimmee FL. When I move to the town, I usually don't know a soul. Several times in Kissimmee, people were shocked that I could just pick up and go to a town where I'm a total stranger. Not so shocking to me. I know I don't change and no matter where I go I'm still me. SoCrates

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but their was no kick in getting him to act with anger. What he thought and why he thought it I didn't care about one way or the other and that is what I was attempting to transmit. I knew who I was and, in my book, that's all that mattered. SoCrates

Hmmmm, interesting. That's nearly word for word what he wrote on Twitter. SoCrates

I can attest to that. I can't tell you how many face melting I got because I was autonomous. One time he sat there and gave me the mother of all facemeltings in front of the whole twig. Odd how you remeber the facemeltings more than what caused them. I let him rant and rave and have his petty little insurrection. Finally, he ran out of rage. I looked at him calmly and said: "Finished?" This enraged him even more. "Hello," he bellowed, "is anybody in there?" They seemed to want people to be as dependent on them as they could make them. Because I was autonomous I was unpredictable. Usual methods didn't work on me because I never was one to bow to peer pressure. Which, in all fairness, probably drove him crazy. SoCrates

I'm more into the plan theory: There's just too many happy coincidences: Just happen to find a class to sell Just happen to find works to plagerize Just happen to find the right people to cover up neferious acts Way too many coincidences fo it to be an accident. SoCrates

The thing that shocks me is how they come up with all the guilt trips for the rank and file that somehow doesn't hold for the leadership. Salt covenant was one of them. Another was we were told not to leave the field as WOWs. If we left the field it could affect our whole lives. They quoted that verse in Proverbs about watching your mouth when you go into the temple and not to vow a vow you don't mean. Then you look at leadership and their acting like ethics aren't even there. SoCrates

She also had snakes instead of hair and was defeated by a mirror. SoCrates

Not a sled but something else he rode quite frequently? SoCrates

Salt covenant. Didn't Craigmeister take a salt covenant during his instillation ceremony? We all know how that worked out. SoCrates

Which leads me to the conclusion that Saint Vic was actually an advance man for the other side. SoCrates

My understanding of God's foreknowledge is His ability to see into the future. One way I've had it explained to me was visualize a cone. God is at the point and all of time is on the disc at the bottom. So God can see all of time at once. Don't you think your getting just a tad defensive here? All I asked was a simple question. I didn't say anything about his right to put a tree where he wanted. I didn't say anything about it was wrong not to let them eat it. I didn't say his rule was wrong. I don't leave a loaded gun around a child, even if I told it not to play with it. I don't leave a book of matches lying around the house, even though I alert my neices and nephews to the dangers of playing with them. And these precautions are based on what might happen, nonetheless if I could foresee it will happen. No complaint. Just questioning what doesn't make sense to me. If I had did that in the ministry I would have left a lot sooner. There are a couple of flaws in this argument. First, one has to accept that one needs to be saved. Two, one has to accept this is the only way, what if there are others? How do we know there are not others? Neither argument can arrive at a conclusion by reasoning, so being a skeptic, I just put them in my "Don't Have Enough Information" file. I'm nowhere as smart as God, but a contradictions exist even in the plan scenerio. If God can create anything he wants, why not cut to the chase and create that perfect universe he wanted in the first place? Why put human beings through the whole spiritual battle scenerio? Again, this is something for my Don't Have Enough Information file. SoCrates

No you don't have to do anything you don't choose to do. But, I would think in the interest of keeping an open mind you would at least entertain other points of view. What if we told you the same thing you just told Penworks? This discussion would have lasted two posts. It would have boiled down to you have your opinion, I have mine, let's both go our seperate ways. So you admit Saint Vic's version of the bible is private interpretation and not the given word of God. After all he taught it word by word and verse by verse. Then why bother to have this discussion? Yes, we get back to that old bugaboo, what's your agenda? SoCrates

But then, comes another amusing question: Through His foreknowledge God knew Satan was going to rebel, yet He created him anyway. Why? Just as through His foreknowledge He knew man would eat the fruit of the tree in the garden of Eden, yet he put it there anyway. Again, why? SoCrates

(source) And in all those divine conversations, God never got around to telling you adultry was wrong? Or that swearing and screaming like a raving lunatic on the pulpit made his ministry look bad? Or how it was His ministry, not yours. His people, not yours? And you were responsible to lead them, not lord over them? I guess somehow the God remembers all the hairs on my head, forgot to to mention these things. SoCrates

I'd like to agree with you, Ham. But most of the people I encounter IRL seldom think about anything beyond the next 30 seconds. SoCrates

From what I can remeber, Saint Vic said God gave ownership of the earth to man, who when he committed the original sin transfered it to the devil. My next thought is: God creates laws, why would he worry about being legally legal? SoCrates