WordWolf

No.

OK, next movie. "You promised we could go and see the hanging." "Be sure it ain't your own." "Carry cash, at this time of night? All those thieves and robbers lurking in dark alleyways? I wouldn't dare."

"It's close to midnight, and something evil's lurking in the dark."

When this movie hit theaters, one famous actor was notably missing from the credits. He wasn't in a starring role or anything, he just wanted to be in the movie. In fact, at first, it was hard to recognize him at all in his role. For the record, the early scripts didn't really have his role, but when the director found out he wanted in on the movie, he (the director) hastily added a scene just so he (the famous actor) could be in it.

This show had a single episode with Desi Arnaz. Also appearing in the episode was Desi Arnaz Jr. In effect, he played Desi Arnaz in a few scenes.

"Don't rush me- I'm a'thinking. And my head hurts."

I've actually sat down to watch one of all of those movies. But I've seen part of a few. If we're talking "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" and "Barbie", let alone movies with Harley Quinn, we're talking MARGOT ROBBIE.

I think LEONARDO DI CAPRIO was in at least 2 of those.

The first quote could possibly have been "the Honeymooners". Since the second could not be, that makes this show "THE JACKIE GLEASON SHOW", (or "The Jackie Gleason Hour", or whatever it was.)

Taking a swing, but I have to eliminate this one because I keep thinking of it. "AUTOMAN"?????

Oh, "BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI", featuring "Colonel Bogey's March!"

Taking an educated guess here.... "ANNIE"???

That explains why I couldn't recognize any of the quotes.

Wait, that last part sounds familiar.... Cream's "IN THE WHITE ROOM".

*reads the 9 verses* Even in his own version, it says people will be judged according to their works, and that's all they say. He went from those words to "they'll suffer for some time, and then they'll be annihilated." That was a heck of a jump on his part. It said they would be "judged" (HOW?) and they would be judged "according to their works" (WHAT'S THE CRITERIA, WHAT'S AT STAKE, AND WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE OUTCOMES?) With no other verses, JS inserted his own ideas into the subject. -He footnoted and cross-referenced all sorts of things....but not when it came to that. So, it seems that his ideas were more important than being truthful on this subject. It speaks of vanity. It's the kind of thing that you would expect of a man who would publish his own version of the Bible.

Parables, from what I can see, are each meant to make a single, specific point, in a manner that almost anyone could understand it, and that's it. They are not meant to dissect in fine detail for doctrine- except possibly for the single, specific point. The parable in question is rather pointedly about forgiveness. So, in the parable, the framing story shows a person in prison until a debt is paid. As a basis for doctrine, that's missing the mark (to put it nicely.) Shame on JS if he couldn't just see that immediately, let alone catch it on a later read. As I see it, for him to miss something that obvious means he didn't WANT to see it, and was busy trying to justify something he wanted to see, even if he had to torture the verses to PRETEND that's what they said. Right now, it makes no sense to me for a punishment to be more suffering and THEN annihilation. I'll have to look over the 9 verses and see if, somehow, it makes sense to me afterwards.

*looks up from his book* I'll be back in a bit, but I want to see if anyone else gets it first. I'll keep reading in the meantime.

*reads the Appendix* So, he re-invented Purgatory, a name that does not appear in the Bible! I noticed he made an extensive case for everything EXCEPT the Purgatory. For that, he had EXACTLY ONE VERSE. (Matthew 18: 35.) One thing my twi experience taught me, was that, whenever I saw a doctrine based on EXACTLY ONE VERSE, to look at that verse a lot more carefully, because it was being misunderstood or misinterpreted. (Even its proponent couldn't find another verse that said that. He had to go to Romans 2:5- which doesn't say that- and add a word salad and then claim it DOES say that.) Matthew 18 ended with a proverb whose purpose was explaining forgiveness. I notice he was rather selective in reading into the Parable. He didn't read into the slave throwing the other slave in prison over 100 denarii owed himself here, just the last verse. I'd be a lot slower on the draw than to make either a glib comment, or worse, an entire doctrine, over a single verse like that. JS should know better. But then, if one's "education" is limited to twi and ex-twi, one can be hampered with problems like this for life. vpw hinged doctrines on a single verse all the time.

Well, I'd like to weigh in, here. I'm hoping we can avoid personal shots. In an absolute sense, I'm not sure I'd consider ANY standard as "objective." Let's suppose (for a moment only) that an Omniscient, Omnipotent Deity went and wrote a single standard into all of reality below the quantum level, so that the smallest things that make up the things that make things into things were all based on this single standard. So, all of reality would have it. It would be universally consistent. But would it be "objective"? It would be the decision of a single being whose IQ was so far above mine I couldn't fathom it. So, a standard by a being far, far smarter than me, and potentially far better than anything I could come up with. (Presuming at least as much justice and mercy as me, but more brains and more ability to perform.) That having been said, it would be a subjective standard because it was formed by a being (even if this being was The Being.) So, I may be misunderstanding what we're even discussing. (Forgive me if I am, if I am, it's not on purpose.) When it comes to more general standards of morality, ethics, and so on, I find, for the sake of discussion, I keep drawing on the 9 box alignment grid from AD&D. It's easy to picture. Draw a tic tac toe board on a paper. Leave space all around the nine boxes. Leave space inside each box to write in. Above the top line of boxes, write "Good." Below the bottom line of boxes, write "Evil." To the left of the leftmost, write "Law". To the right of the rightmost, write "Chaos." So, the top row are "Good," the bottom row are "Evil", the leftmost are "Lawful", and the rightmost are "Chaotic." If it helps, think of "Lawful" as "ordered", and "Chaotic" as "independent." (I've found that helps, when discussing this.) So, the nine possible Alignments are: Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral ("Neutral Neutral"), Chaotic Neutral. Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, and Chaotic Evil. Discussing True Neutral ("Neutral Neutral") starts arguments all by itself, so let's skip it or leave it for later, please. Lawful Good are those who say to benefit the most people, follow the rules. Superman and Captain America are Lawful Good. The Adam West Batman was Lawful Good. Neutral Good says to benefit the most. Follow the rules, or break them, whichever works best. The TOS Jim Kirk was Neutral Good. Chaotic Good says to benefit the most by circumventing the rules and freeing the people. Robin Hood was Chaotic Good. Lawful Neutral says to play by your rules, and that's what matters. Jean-Luc Picard and Frank Martin the Transporter are Lawful Neutral. Chaotic Neutrals avoid the rules and just want their freedom. Captain Jack Sparrow was Chaotic Neutral. Lawful Neutrals say the rules are so I can hold power. Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, Saruman were Lawful Evil. Neutral Evil say power is all that matters. Jafar from Disney's "Aladdin" was Neutral Evil. Chaotic Evil's want the freedom to grab or smash anything. Jason Voorhees and Gollum were Chaotic Evil. I left out real people entirely to avoid arguments. (We know Robin Hood by his legends, not his history.) Of course, characters- and people- can have tendencies leaning one way or another while holding an alignment. One Lawful Good may focus more on the Good than the Lawful, another may focus more on the Lawful than the Good. (We might say the first has Neutral Good tendencies, the second has Lawful Neutral tendencies.) We can discuss things in light of the alignment chart. (We don't have to, here or elsewhere, but we can.) I've found it helpful discussing why people or characters are different from each other. https://easydamus.com/alignment.html

Accepting both your premise and your source, you're jumping to the conclusion that there are exactly 45,000 completely different, mutually-exclusive concepts of hell, exactly one for each denomination. Your source called them "denominations", as in variations on a theme, but you changed that to "religions", which is more like the differences between Bahai, Islam, Hindu, Judaism, etc. The same source pointed out that there are 3 major and 6 minor denominational branches of Christianity. Even if every one of those had a mutually-exclusive vision, that would be 9 positions, not 45,000- which is a significant difference. That having been said, a quick look at what they teach shows that there's not 9 different, mutually-exclusive positions, because even a glance shows some of them have the same positions with cosmetic differences- Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican to name 3. Most of the other minor branches they mentioned agree with each other and with Protestantism. Even if one can argue that those 2 are mutually-exclusive positions (I'm not going to weigh in on it either way), that's not 45,000 different religions, that's 2 denominational positions. The difference is rather pronounced.

"CNN changed the game. In 1990, during Dessert Storm, still no one else was doing 24hr news-only broadcasts." I kept trying to watch Dessert Storm, but I just kept getting hungry.

CORRECT! CNN was founded. Worldwide, it was the FIRST 24-hour, news ONLY network. It was the first US news only network, 24 hour or otherwise. Now there's a bunch of 24 hour, news only networks. Seems like every major network in the US has one somewhere. ( CNBC, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, Reuters, not to mention BBC and Euronews, or business news like Yahoo Finance or Bloomberg.) Now, there's all sorts of 24-hour news channels, whether available for national or international viewing. (Where I live, there's at least one LOCAL 24-hour news channel.)

In 1985, JS wrote his Adultery paper. In 1988, JAL wrote about how this ruined marriages and damaged people. A lot of things had come to light in 3 years. When JS wrote again in 2000 with ces/stfi, the rest of us all knew about vpw raping and drugging women since so many of them had come forth. The young, idealistic guy who JS had been 15 years before now had an organization to promote where he was a top dog, and a vested interest in not looking any closer any more, even if it was dishonest. Plenty of people who have been determined to maintain the fiction that vpw wasn't a plagiarizing rapist and have made it a point to avoid all of their accounts. It makes things easier when they pretend there were never women who came forward. I'll call them like I see them- I have no organization to promote. It's not like you're buying a book I wrote at a table in the back of the theater or anything.

You are correct that they didn't immediately connect all the dots. vpw had intentionally designed a tight, secretive cadre. He knew it was a crime and knew any sane person would say it was wrong, so he surrounded himself with a blackout of news on the subject, and maintained a cover story saying the opposite. So, by reputation on the field, people would think such a claim was ridiculous. That having been said, he did sometimes let a passing comment go that gave something away. Also, as you got closer to the cadre, you started to get exposed to sex stuff- like on-grounds people and pornography "so they could minister to people better after watching the pornography." So, these guys knew about "consensual" sex, but not outright rapes or drugging where she was unconscious and he molested her. I put "consensual" in quotes because, with a power imbalance, exactly how much "consent" is there is a matter for disagreement and discussion. Miles away from anywhere else, thousands of miles from family, friends and home, and surrounded by people as indoctrinated as you, you're told this man has a direct link with God and are indoctrinated that he can do no wrong, nor would he want to. Then he starts telling you lies, like God wants you to commit adultery or fornication, and rationalizes it. In an absolute sense, she can say "No", but vpw set his little "consensual sex" game up rather cleverly. And those women likely to say something were never invited, and those women likely to be better victims- those with histories of sexual assault- were invited, and they were still monitored in case they looked ready to spill the beans. So, no, JS and RD had heard about some "consensual" sex, but not about druggings and rapes. What they did manage to hear was bad enough, and was not easy to hear due to the cadre doing their best to cover vpw's tracks. However, I think you misunderstood me about the timeline of events with JS and the Adultery paper. He gave 2 different accounts as to why he did the research, and 2 different time-frames as to how long it took. 1) He did it for his own knowledge because he realized he didn't know any verses offhand to recite to counter thoughts of fornication 2) No, he researched it because RD and VF told him that vpw requested a paper on the subject. A) So, it took him 3 years to research the paper. B) No, it was done in a few months. I doubt JS was INTENTIONALLY lying to us. I think he CONFLATED two different events, and each thing he said happened, happened. The order I see them happening and not contradicting each other nor common sense is 1A, then 2B. So, here's how I think the sequence of events went. 1) JS had the incident he mentioned, where he said "no" and sent the woman on her way, and realized he didn't have any verses in his "retemories" to recite on this subject. On his own time, and only as he felt like it, he spent the next 3 years on and off doing the research. He finished it to his own satisfaction, and went on his way. 2) Some time later, RD and VF approach him. "We were told the Grand Poobah wants you to research this. Let us know when you're done." JS now has an actual paper to write, an actual request to do so, and a request from the Grand Poobah. So, on his own time and in between everything else, he revisits old ground (it's old ground to him because he's researched it before), and in a few months during his down time, he's got a full paper on the subject. While he was writing it, he may easily have talked to a few people, sounding them out, asking what they were taught, and so on. That would account for having all the relevant "Appendices" with the "arguments" that JS had to address to be thorough and address twi's issues. He was honest, so he did so. Even when he finished it, he still had no idea it was the tip of the iceberg- or that vpw was the biggest offender- after all, if vpw ordered it written, why would he do so if it would expose him? So, JS didn't see it coming- although I think RD and VF did. So, that's how I reconcile JS's accounts. He wasn't lying, he was mistaken and conflated 2 different things. Of course, I could easily be wrong and one of those was a lie. You'll have to decide what you think was more likely. I really don't know the man. I know it's more common for the average person to be honestly mistaken than to go around lying. (In that respect, vpw wasn't "an average person." As a liar, he was an EXCEPTIONAL liar.)

It had nothing to do with flatscreens nor digital TV.