WordWolf

What The Hey: [As has been pointed out before, using vpw's own standards and tools to examine vpw's materialsis not the way to objectively examine or to most fairly evaluate the accuracy of the materials. There's a bias there, which will affect your results. Moreover, if you WANT to legitimize his stuff, that will further bias your results. That having been said, some people have examined his work, and concluded by the standards espoused in pfal, pfal falls short of its stated performance. That also having been said, I've seen what WTH considers sufficient for his own standards, and I'm not impressed. A lot of things could pass HIS standard that wouldn't come close to passing mine. There's also a selective memory in effect here- those who came up with conclusions contradicting vpw were NOT embraced by vpw, nor was their work studied to see if he could improve his own. vpw's position was retained, and the other person's was suppressed. That's why even the response to the "Adultery" letter wasn't so shocking- suppressing the "unpleasant news" was standard operating procedure at the way.] [Actually, your answer did nothing of the kind. Frankly, the Ted Patrick/Deprogramming things were a windfall for twi- vpw was able to use them to monger fear and get everyone to "circle the wagons" because those evil deprogrammers were out to get them. Also, the experience of any one person is irrelevant here-the consistent pattern of the criminal is what we're looking at. If he does not commit a crime Tuesday, and we're watching him Tuesday, that doesn't mean he's become a fine, upstanding citizen.] [some of the time, he taught some good Bible. Some of the time, he did some nice things for some people. Some of the time, he taught things that were very harmful. Some of the time, he did some despicable, evil things to some people. The times people needed him to be godly the most were the times he was in the middle of committing dark, corrupt acts, and compounded them by shrouding them in the legitimacy of a clergy title. THAT's when they "needed him the most." That's when he really should have made the effort a normal male does to try to "be the man he knows himself to be". To hide this is to facilitate evil by hiding or excusing it, and those are actions never sanctioned by Scripture. Calling evil "good" is roundly condemned. Of course, WTH can't see that evil actions deserve some outrage because they're wrong. That requires a working conscience. Instead, he can only conjecture why normal, healthy adults would be angry about vpw's crimes. No, we're not looking for sympathy. Most of us- especially the males- were never raped or drugged by vpw. (At least not physically.) We're outraged over crimes that were committed, and crimes labelled "acceptable" using a cloak of legitimacy by misusing clergy positions, and crimes covered up by a number of people- and still being covered up to this day-or at least attempted so. The blessing of the LORD makes rich, and He adds no sorrow to it. The blessings of vpw made a few rich, and added crippling sorrow to a few others. That's not acceptable to almost everyone, and if it wasn't vpw doing it, it wouldn't be acceptable to anyone. BTW, I think the above quote is a perfect example of the types of response one can expect from a dulled (seared) conscience when faced with suffering resulting from evil acts. No sympathy, just a rude joke. If WTH is the "after" picture, I feel confident that few people will be rushing to sign up for whatever program produces this.]

See, you can look at PART of the life of one guy, and say that MOST of the time, he was a good man. He was considered a pillar of his local civic community, a member of the Jaycees, and even entertained children as a clown. HOWEVER, character is not a "part of the time" thing. Most people would say that-although only a tiny fraction of the time John Wayne Gacy spent in his community was spent killing young boys- that tiny fraction of time was sufficient to erase any supposed good the community received when he wasn't kidnapping, imprisoning or killing. Character is what you are 100% of the time- not 25% or 50% or 75% or even 95%. If you are the scum of the earth, you can spend relatively little of your time killing, raping, molesting, and so on, and people will consider you scum. That's not an inordinate amount of focus on evil deeds. That's putting the focus on where it should be. When discussing anyone but vpw, just about everyone on the planet has no difficulty getting this.

Well, while we wait.... "You're going to have to get the Enterprise to the Neutral Zone before it's too late."

It amazes me that some people think plagiarism relies on many things that have nothing to do with plagiarism. A) Intent. "Until I see a confession that the person intended to plagiarize, I don't consider it plagiarism." Plagiarism is plagiarism whether the person admits to it (no crime's dependant upon a confession), and intent doesn't affect plagiarism. What makes this especially silly is that any high school student, let alone college or grad school student, is well aware of what plagiarism is and how wrong it is. So, "ignorance of the law" is not an issue here. Any high school graduate who plagiarized INTENDED to plagiarize. In this particular case, it is part of the complete picture, taken with what he DID say on the record, that demonstrates he set out to put forth that himself was some great one. B) Identical phrasing. "It's only plagiarism if the exact same words are used in the exact same order." Hogwash. If one says that initially, one demonstrates a lack of understanding of plagiarism. If one CONTINUES to say this, then one demonstrates a determined ignorance of plagiarism, a dogged persistence to ignore what plagiarism means and how it works, even faced with clear explanations of both. If a writer takes the exact words from another writer without citation, that is plagiarism. If a writer shuffles some of the words of another writer around, and swaps in some synonyms, maybe shuffles the paragraph around, and doesn't cite his source, it is STILL plagiarism. That's the same thing as the first case, with a few cosmetic changes to try to deceive his audience. Of course, one may see all the explanations of how plagiarism works for everyone except those trying to excuse vpw of plagiarism (99.9999 of the population or more, plus all the legal definitions, and the ones used in courts of law, all institutions of learning, and by virtually all Christians), and decide "well, I'm coming up with my own definition of what plagiarism is and whether it's a crime." That's about as legitimate as saying "I'm coming up with my own definition of what murder is and whether it's a crime." You'll end up with a definition that is meaningless to anyone but you and carries no force for any other English speaker.

Can we see a new face take a turn?

"What do you read, my lord?" "Words. Words. Words." "What is the matter?" "Between who?" "I mean, the matter that you read" "I see a cherub that sees them." "In second husband let me be accursed- none wed the second but who killed the first!" A little more than kin, and less than kind." "These are the best actors in the world! Either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral. For the law of writ and the liberty... these are the only men."

"What do you read, my lord?" "Words. Words. Words." "What is the matter?" "Between who?" "I mean, the matter that you read" "I see a cherub that sees them." "In second husband let me be accursed- none wed the second but who killed the first!"

I remember that now, they were the Jablonskis. According to Bud, the smart Kelly was frigid, too. I thought most people didn't pick up how funny that was. (Well, I thought it was funny. Whatever.)

I'd like to have a "new" person post one, not one of the usual 3-4 suspects. If not, I can post one, but let's see someone new take it!

Just bringing this up for the new folks. If someone's having trouble finding a new avatar, we might even be able to help out...

It's easy to look into SOME of the plagiarism that appears in that book. It's a combination of 2 of Bullinger's books: "The Rich Man and Lazarus: An Intermediate State?" and "Saul and the Witch at Endor: Did the Dead Rise at Her Bidding?" Note that the question format was stolen also. Now, the former of those books appears here in its entirety: http://philologos.org/__eb-rml/ (That site also has it available as a PDF.)

Uptown, forgive me if I remain cynical that this will result in any changes other than cosmetic at CES/STFI. Too much work and too much humility needed to truly revamp the group-they'll need to gut much of the current focus, and that's going to take admitting their foci were completely wrong. I think they're going to keep their baggage, make no real changes, announce an exploratory committee to examine some stuff and be very vague about what they're doing, maybe announce that a few times, and that's the last real action you're going to see on that. Ever. CES/STFI is free to prove me wrong on that-and I hope they will. However, I'm thinking about a leopard and spots here.

I used to have to log in twice when logging in-consistently, every single time- but I didn't get logged out otherwise. I AM mindful of being "timed out", but it hasn't happened yet. I just discovered that if I wait for the log in and ignore the link to click when waiting, it finishes and I don't have to repeat it. I hope this works consistently.

Neo, Hello. :) This is some rough, harsh stuff to go over. You might want to go slow, and take some time to digest it. There's no hurry, and you can go at any pace you can adjust to. You don't have to impress anyone by accepting it fast, or not having emotions about it, or any other action. You don't even have to impress yourself by showing off, either. :) We can pick up any discussion of same months from now, whenever you've read everything and digested it. We'll be here.

Bingo. We've seen a sermon while hearing one, on this thread. 20 points for ex10. You win the internet.

[so strong-convictions=possessed. What's next, witch-hunts? Gonna check if someone has fur inside their skin to prove they turn into a wolf? Check for moles as proof of a bargain with the devil?] [Now you can read his mind. Wowzer.I might have said something like "he might be more ready to consider that maybe Jesus isn't (not wasn't) God the Creator of Heaven and Earth." But you know he partly doesn't believe it, somewhere in his head. Amazing. If you can do that face-to-face, you'd clean up on Jeopardy!, Millionaire, and Weakest Link.] [i appreciate your candor. Strong convictions means "possessed", and "emotional against vp" means "bad judgement". Evidence, apparently, is irrelevant. Me, I would think that a laundry list of the crimes of a criminal would be WORTH some emotion, but I don't speak for everyone.] [someone said it was all "written off as 'deception''? Who claimed that one. Most claim its contents are SUSPECT because they were assembled and presented deceptively. A few people discount all Christian endeavours, and thus pfal gets dismissed with all other Christians, but that's hardly the popular position here. Who's been posting this, John?]

[WordWolf in boldface and brackets again.]

Ok, next movie. "What do you read, my lord?" "Words. Words. Words." "What is the matter?" "Between who?" "I mean, the matter that you read" "I see a cherub that sees them."

Hang on, I'll need to do a little quote-seeking first.....

That might sound like an exaggeration. However, A) RTHST was entirely a cut-and-paste of content from other authors- primarily Stiles and Bullinger. The driest section, I'm sure you can recognize, was the contents of Bullinger's book now known as "Word Studies on the Holy Spirit", the 385 references to "spirit" in the New Testament. B) Some of Bullinger's books were pretty small. Take all the content of ADAN, remove the content of "the Rich Man and Lazarus..." by Bullinger, and remove the content of "Saul and the Witch at Endor", by Bullinger, neither of which is cited in ADAN, and what you get is the cover, the intro and the acknowledgements page. I could go on (like mention the Orange Book's contents), but everyone who is able to get the point has already gotten the point. He took large amounts of material from books, sometimes their entire contents, and put them into "his" books, sometimes making up their entire contents. That's what I said, the evidence supports it, and that's what he did. And it was a crime each time, because he didn't cite his sources when he did that. ====== BTW, you were fine with him demoting parts of Genesis, then? You were conspicuously silent on that while trying to deny aspects of vpw's plagiarism.... Some attempts to the contrary, THIS is what this thread is about. Amazing how there's been multiple attempts to change the subject- accusing Moses of plagiarism, calling "vpw's books" "the word of God", denying the extent of his plagiarism....

Well, since it's on the tapes from ROA '79, and vpw said, proudly, "It Is Available", I consider that as authoritative as vpw putting it in writing. Perhaps HE was mistaken. Perhaps he didn't know that the policies had changed at least 3 years ago. If so, he suddenly seems to know a LOT less than he usually did....

Fascinating. See, if Oakspear or George Aar said this, I wouldnt bat an eye. It is consistent with their general positions- that the Bible is not THE Divine Book, direct from God. However, one who claims it IS is now suddenly trying to downgrade, to demote, parts of Holy Scripture. Is he doing this because he no longer believes it is The Word of God? No, it seems he's demoting part of the Book of Genesis in an attempt to absolve the plagiarizing fraud, vpw, of wrongdoing when he knowingly took the books of others, moved some words around, and put his name on the cover, pretending they never wrote THEIR books. And while we're at it, "vpw's books" (the works of others rephrased or reprinted with vpw's name on them) have now become "the word of God." Am I misunderstanding it? You tell me. Looks like "vpw's" books have been pronounced "the word of God" when I wasn't looking.