WordWolf

As to plagiarism, I once heard an argument that sounded like this... First of all, vpw never plagiarized. God dictated the passages to him. Second of all, he may have done it, but God told him to lift the lines. Third of all, the men he plagiarized approved of it. Fourth of all, the men should be ashamed of themselves for not approving of it like God did. As to the first and second, I'm not even addressing them. If you believe that, nothing I can say will mean anything to you. As to them approving of it, several were dead when vpw plagiarized them, and several of them didn't hear about it for years. Remember-the distribution of the books was TIGHTLY CONTROLLED by twi- you could NOT buy them in Barnes & Noble nor could you borrow them from your local library. It's been said that BG Leonard added elaborate copyright notes to his books and became a lot more tightlipped after his work was ripped off. He did not, however, seek legal action. I cannot prove the reason, and I was not there, but I suspect it was more a matter of an unwillingness to sue another Christian, even if he WAS doing wrong.

vpw chose out the most "faithful" (blindly obedient) member of his inner circle that he could find. As to the skunk pelt, if I remember correctly, I learned here at the GSC that it was something lcm had made up for himself to symbolize how special and holy he was, thus it was a later addition.

I clicked up an old thread where we discussed it.

Since someone asked about this, I'm clicking this back to the top....

Because he's the serious one. :)--> Plus, he's played by that guy from the Matrix. Zixar, how you managed to make it thru "Bored of the Rings", I'll never know. The only stuff I thought was funny was naming the elf "Legolam" and one of the towers "Minas Troney". Otherwise, it struck me as something you couldn't read sober. "Oh, I didn't like that scene, so I'm leaving it out." (Smack.) I felt the scouring of the Shire showed how much they had changed, and how their lives were up to them now, and how far "Sharkey" had fallen. ("A little trouble in a mean way.") Somebody I know said they could easily have fit in the entire "Scouring of the Shire" sequence if they trimmed down some of the scenes where everybody stared at each other. :)-->

Sunny1, Internet scams con people into giving up money and personal information. Yes, the victim should have been more paranoid, but does this excuse the con artist? A smooth enough scam can fool almost anyone. Why do I bring this up? It's been brought up here that the Way Corps candidates were required to write papers before they entered the corps, and this included autobiographies. Some of them included information that indicated some of the women had been sexually victimized or exploited in childhood or adolescence. As you may know, people who have been traumatized in that way by certain vile people are more vulnerable to later exploitation by later vile people. Those women whose "confidential" autobiographies included backgrounds of sexual abuse and molestation were- surprise, surprise! Singled out and targeted for "affairs"/molestation/rape/abuse by the "upper echelon". Quite a concidence, wouldn't you say? One might almost think that the papers had been read and targeted for victims....if one were very mistrustful, one might think that the entire purpose of the autobiographies was to get dirt for later exploitation. When some people left twi or were kicked out, info from the "confidential" papers was often cited as "proof" the person was now delving into evil in leaving twi. Hmmm... almost sounds like quite a bit of "premeditation" happened. Strange how vpw had a HOUSE, yet he also had a trailer on grounds where these young women were brought. It takes work to set up a trailer like that. Is it remotely possible that the entire purpose for the trailer (when he had a HOUSE RIGHT THERE) was to arrange in advance a separate, secluded place where young women could be molested without interruption? Seems almost beyond belief, no? What else was it for? (He had a HOUSE RIGHT THERE.) I'm mentioning "premeditation" because it makes a big difference when discussing crimes. "Premeditation" means a crime was planned out before executed. It's the difference between a "crime of passion" and a callous act. It's the difference between first-degree murder and manslaughter. Look- if Rafael and I meet in the street, argue, fight, and one of us kills the other, that would be viewed as manslaughter. It happened in the "heat of the moment." If Rafael and I meet in the street, and 5 burly friends of one of us mysteriously appear on cue and knife the other guy, and the survivor's Day Planner list this block of time as "time to murder", then this shows he PLANNED it-thus, premeditation is shown. This makes it a WORSE crime, since it was planned out coldly. ======================== Let's say Rottiegrrl and I met for cocktails New Years Eve. It's possible both of us could "click" and get "intimate" and start a relationship (or get intimate and not start a relationship.) If one of us had regrets the next day, well, we're adults and we should have known better....... but what if one of us had slipped the other "rohypnol" in their drink? If I did that, and she had regrets the next day, not knowing I had drugged her to take advantage of her, would you say she should just "get over it"? If she drugged me, and I ended up cheating on my imaginary wife as a result, would you say I was equally responsible, and should just get on with my life? Some things you "just get over". When someone makes a deliberate plan, and orchestrates it, setting steps into motion to eventually make a victim out of you for their own gain, you don't just chalk it up to experience. You warn others that this person lacks integrity, and warn them to keep a safe distance, lest bad things happen to them. They are NOT to trust them. ========================================================== "All the women in the kingdom belong to the king." That's a direct quote from pfal AND the collaterals. The context: King David's seduction of a married woman in his kingdom, and the subsequent arranged murder of her husband to cover David's tracks. vpw said that "technically" David could have gotten away with this because "all the women in the kingdom belong to the king." NO! This defies the written Laws in effect, the letter AND intent of the Mosaic Law concerning marriage, and was an abuse of the power he wielded as king. Everybody knows that. The concept of the "droit de seigneur" was NEVER in effect in the Bible. Strange it was part of vpw's teaching, though. Why would he maintain that the person in top authority was within his rights to have sex freely with the women under his authority? Might this be a concept that was on his mind? It certainly was not outlined from Scripture..... Might this be a hint, a clue, to deliberate intent? It certainly would help establish a pattern of state-of-mind. It's not without irony that I compare King David's coverup with vpw's coverups in my mind. Some of you may see the same thing I do. (Some of you may not.)

Hello, Linda. I haven't seen you or the Mr posting here before, but it doesn't mean I like either of you any less for that. :)--> We all arrived here at different times, and I, personally, would have guessed you'd arrive sooner. If you're late to the movie, you missed a few scenes. Please review the documents and editorials on the GSC main page. http://www.greasespotcafe.com There's been many, many threads where many, many witnesses have come forth-people who were victimized by vpw, people who were used as unwitting pawns to victimize others and realized it years later (but trusted him too much to suspect him THEN), and people who've witnessed either, and put the pieces together since then. This is hardly an issue where one person is making a single claim. This is not a "smear" or "whisper" campaign. These things WOULD have come to light if there had been an internet long ago, instead of people vanishing and there being a "lockbox" policy about coverups, and people who vanish were not subject to their OWN smear campaign by twi. Review some of this stuff, and you'll see what I mean. lcm didn't make this up on his own-he imitated his instructor.

I hear you, What The Hey. So, tell me, then, which is your position.... A) All the women who claim vpw raped or molested them are lying (We've heard this one before) B) vpw raped and molested women for their own good (We've heard this one before) C) vpw unintentionally did evil when he arranged to have young, impressionable women brought to him in private, plyed them with alcohol, and fed them a line about being spiritual enough to disregard his marriage vows. (This would be a new one.) So, which one isn't too "extreme" for you? You know, down in my area, there's this big gaping hole where some buildings used to stand until a few years ago. Some people think it's inconceivable that they could be struck down by hijacked airplanes. However, that's what happened anyway. Extremist or not, it's true.

Sorry, Lorna. This isn't new thought. We've already addressed each of these points already. First of all, Dot's point. Research is good. Claiming other people's work was given you directly by God is bad. Second of all, Steve's point. vpw thought it was perfectly acceptable for himself to lift whole chapters from books by EW Kenyon, EW Bullinger, JE Stiles, etc, but made sure all HIS books had copyrights on them so that no one could do the same with HIS books. Third of all, you have an improper understanding of plagiarism. Plagiarism is a rather specific CRIME. It is not writing something SIMILAR to someone else. It is not studying the work of others and producing a similar work. It is the deliberate act of taking the work of other people and claiming it is your own, and making the deliberate decision to avoid citing your source. It will get you in trouble in high school. It will get you thrown out of college, grad school or divinity school. EVERY student and EVERY graduate knows this. Making the deliberate decision to do so ANYWAY is wrong. It is a lie, and dishonest. It is theft-the theft of another's work. It shows a lack of integrity, and a lack of respect for your audience. It is laziness. It is vanity-pretending you're too important to do your own work. There's hundreds of websites that can give you a more accurate definition of plagiarism. I didn't find a GOOD one, but I did find a number of websites that showed what different universities thought of it. Not knowing if you have access to a pdf reader, I've left off the best one I found, but you can look at this one: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sources/about/what.html If you have Adobe Acrobat reader, you can view this pdf document: http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/tut/plagiarism.pdf There's other points-I'm sure others will chime in with them, and with better links. Funny-I was going to leave alone the plagiarism business, but since you brought it up....

Oh, and Mike, In case you missed it, Pawtucket has spoken. "These are discussion threads, not lecture threads." And most of your threads, proposing Doctrine as they do, go in the DOCTRINAL forum.

BackForty, Here's what you've missed. Please keep in mind that this is coming from one poster, who may or may not be accurately reflecting things. However, it is my studied opinion, and you are free to compare it to the archived threads and the new ones that start. Mike has claimed that he spent many years thinking all kinds of things, then about 5 years ago, he came to the conclusion that vpw's writings- pfal and the collaterals and so on-have replaced the Bible and are now SUPERIOR to it in terms of what we need to read nowadays. (Actually, it was shown he's held this opinion longer.) Mike has called the Bible-the King James Version and so on- "unreliable fragments" and "tattered remnants", and then he called them "approximations", and things like "close", but not completely up to scratch. Mike claims that the proof of vpw's work being God-breathed was the snowstorm that nobody else saw, and the 1952 promise that seriously failed to match reality. In case you've forgotten them, that's the "snow on the gas pumps" vpw said he saw in later years (he claimed it in later years). The promise was that if vpw would teach it to others, God Himself would teach him His Word like it hadn't been known since the First Century. "The Word as it was known in the First Century" is a neat concept, but since the printing press wasn't invented, the Written Word was in short supply. Further, the practices of vpw-run everything in neatly-packaged classes- bore no relation to events in the first century church. Further, the fact that vpw was shown to invent snowstorms on other occasions to make himself sound more special wouldn't be addressed, either. Mike claims that vpw's work is God-breathed because vpw SAID it was God-breathed, which we know because he said it was. When asked for proof to believe this wild story, Mike has said that the only way to prove it is to spend hundreds of hours of time digging thru vpw's old teachings, both on paper and tape, and eventually you'll be convinced of this. (Which is hardly enough to convince us to spend the hundreds of hours.) Mike's claimed that there's some special plateau reached when one does this, a level Mike himself freely admits to not reaching. Mike claimed that vpw's "last, secret lost teaching" was this teaching where vpw said, in short "Outside of The Way International, there is no real truth among Christians. To really serve people, you'll need to master my 3 PFAL classes-Foundational, Intermediate and Advanced." Mike has taken this as his battlecry and has claimed that the "good old days" remembered by some were pretty much the result of vpw being THE man of God, and Mike has taken various approaches to claims that specific people were molested/raped/etc by vpw, including that they lied, or that it was for their own good and we need to lighten up on our definition of "sexual assault." If vpw did something, it was by definition for someone's own good, because otherwise the secret doctrine that true spiritual understanding comes from secrets sprinkled in the twi books would be in jeopardy. Mike's basic approach has been to promise some incredible secret will be revealed. So far, he hasn't produced anything that 95% or more of us have considered even noteworthy, let alone worth the fanfare preceeding it. Mike considers vpw's works to be devoid of any error, excepting possibly inkstains on the manuscripts. Entire lists of errors have been posted, which Mike refuses to acknowledge, saying the actual errors are only in the mind of the reader. Oh, that's right- unless you're an old-timer, you are incapable of reading vpw's books and gaining understanding of them-you're in a lesser classification. So far, true spiritual understanding, for Mike, has come from things hidden cabalistically amongst various teachings. Many of us have disagreed, which, according to Mike, makes us either "crybabies" (vpw raped me) or "unfit researchers" (pfal has errors on page xx). Mike's approach is that he's the only one that has the truth, and the rest of us seem to be retarded children who must be led by the hand and are incapable of understanding, and that honest dissent is ERROR. (My apologies to any retarded children reading this post.) So, Mike often will make a number of claims, and a number of us will dispute them. Occasionally, tempers flare, and Mike and some of his dissenters will get unprofessional in their conduct. When a few posters see so many disagreeing loudly with Mike, they seem to conclude that it is NOT because we all have legitimate disagreements with him, but that Mike is being singled out because he has an unpopular point of view. Thus, he's entitled to get mean-spirited and insult the opposing POV, but his dissenters do not. In case you're wondering, yes, I'm the same poster that was periodically doing digests of Mike's sequipedalian threads, so that other posters could keep up, and know what was going on without having to wade thru them all. Mike's view of same, of course, being that, as an "unfit researcher", that I'm unqualified and unable to fairly represent the contents of his threads. I leave it to the readers as to whether both those threads and this summary represent accurately what's happened to date. Personally, I agree with the many posters who've said Mike needs to respect and actually READ the posts of the people who disagree with him. (We read HIS posts, but he's reluctant to grant us the same courtesy.)

One of the pieces of "It's a Wonderful Life" trivia.... "Bert" and "Ernie" from this movie are who the Sesame Stree muppets are named after. BTW, somewhere, there's a copy of the rules to the "It's a Wonderful Life" drinking game. I was reading them, thinking how incredibly complicated they were. There was stuff like "When George Bailey says 'Bert! Ernie!', everyone begins singing the 'Rubber Duckie' song-the last person to chime in must take a drink." If I remember right, the end of the movie, everyone sings along.... except the most sober person in the room, who must continue to drink all thru the song, because "no one is alone as long as he has friends."

She was only a stockbroker's daughter, but every man got his share.

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Happy Kwanzaa! Happy Chanukah! Happy Winter Solstice! Enjoy time spent with family and friends without official sanction! :)--> If for no other reason but that it ticks off the moglets. :)-->

We can just keep putting the truth out there. God will have to work in their hearts to make it stick. Or, for you secular humanists, we can facilitate the processing of information, but they must WANT to change.

I'm not stewing in bitterness and hatred over this stuff. I refuse to forget it, and I refuse to stay silent about it. If I forget it, I might idealize it, and decide that only the good times were true, and I exaggerated the bad times. If I stay silent, that means others won't hear about it, and they need to be kept informed.

Rather than being hamstrung by all the deficiencies of the old system you were shackled to, you now have the opportunity to discover that other Christians are neither scum nor idiots. (Sure, there's a few of those, but that was true when you were in twi also.) Some Christians know their stuff and know nothing about twi or their spinoffs. (Imagine my surprise.) You now have the chance to learn from the strengths of many different TYPES of Christians, and not have to fit yourself in the cookie-cutter that's currently being used by twi. You have tremendous opportunities, both physically and online. You feel uncomfortable making your own path. Well, you've done it before! Do you still eat baby food? No, you eat what you want, and I bet there's both nutrition and variety. Still have someone dress you and tie your shoelaces? No, you live your own life. Birdy, it's time to stretch your wings and fly. The sky is yours.

I've recommended everyone read all the documents at least once or twice a year, just to remind themselves how bad the things we weren't told were, and to remind us how far we've come. When I point that out, though, people act like I'm handing out homework. (Hey, I reread them also.)

WyteDuv, It IS here. The document is posted on the GSC. The links are from the main page in 2 formats: PDF HTML HTML is the same format as the page you're reading now. If you can read this, you can read HTML documents. Go to the main page, then to "Way Documents". Select "HTML", then scroll down until you find the excerpt from lcm.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. =============================== Hm. The cross. That's that thing twi was fond of casually editing out of their songs. The splinter groups often do it too. Here's an easy way to check. Look through your songbook. Find something that rhymes with "cross" ending a line. Compare it against its matching line. No rhyme, right? But the other lines all rhymed..... One of the first things twi was fond of doing was REMOVING the crosses and steeples at locations they took over. "If they'd have shot Jesus Christ with a machinegun, we'd all be wearing machineguns."- lcm. This was one other place where "Babylon Mystery Religion's" contents were lauded to the sky. Those are the same contents repudiated by the author in his followup book "the Babylon Connection." Woodrow basically said "here's where my last book was wrong, and why." He pretty much trashed his preceding book, and in the process, gave intelligent reasons why the cross is not a pagan symbol at present. Those of you who still respect Bullinger's work might want to reread "the Witness of the Stars". Bullinger believed that "crux" aka the Southern Cross, was a symbol of the redemption. (Crux was visible from Palestine at the time of the cruxifixion, per Bullinger and confirmed by Zixar.) At the time I was attempting to stay awake thru Bullinger's book, that concept pretty much invalidated the "bad cross" teaching I'd heard. "Well, if GOD ALMIGHTY used it for the redemption, who am I to gainsay Him?}" Those of you who don't care about Bullinger, I refer you to Woodrow's plain speaking in his newer book. He's aware that crosses have been used for many things, but now, they are NOT. Personally, I'm still not crazy of crucifixes-crosses with a beaten-down figure on them. I HAVE seen a church with a crucifix-type symbol I liked, though. It's a cross, there's Jesus in front, but it looks like he's ascending. He's not shown as a defeated-looking man afflicted for our transgressions, he's shown as the conqueror who paid the redemption no one else could. A separate issue I'm not ready to explore is-is it wrong for me to dislike the other type? They acknowledge the INCREDIBLE price paid for our sins, which, again, twi was uncomfortable with. As lcm saw it, the cross was a disgusting symbol of idolatry similar to the obelisks he hated. As he spewed, so spewed the moglets. As vpw saw it, the cross was a symbol of traditional Christianity, that thing he despised and lampooned as backward, man-based, and Bible-ignorant. Traditional Christians, in all of his illustrations, were always contrasted with us Christians who REALLY understood stuff, the few, the L337. As a traditional symbol, it made a perennial target for him.

Dot, The quote was in "the Groovy Christians of Rye" in Life Magazine, as was recently mentioned. The quote was in response to said groovy Christians. ("Groovy" was a slang term at the time, of course, not the official name they called themselves in this group.) The quote, which burned itself into my memory when I read it, was "Sometimes I almost wish they'd go back to smoking a little dope. I mean, drugs I can understand, but this? This is weird." That was attributed to a local librarian, if memory serves. My immediate response when reading that was, more or less, "so much for her in-depth understanding of the situation."

Good idea. Might also want to pray for those who are vulnerable to such snares today, that they evade them, escape, or be set free. "David Koresh"s "Branch Davidians" weren't so long ago. (Hm. That guy also taught that all the women belonged to the mog.) "Do"'s "Heaven's Gate" suiciders (who killed themselves when the Halle-Bopp comet passed thru) were even more recent. Then, there's whatever new evil person is now stepping onto some local stage, hoping to impress some people and score some chicks.... =================================================== It may be tasteless, but back in college, I knew a fraternity (not mine) that commemorated this day by making kool-aid. I thought it was funny at the time.

The first 3 books in any Piers Anthony series are usually good. The first few Xanth books-"A Spell For Chameleon", "The Source of Magic", "Castle Roogna", "Night Mare"- were great reads. "Ogre, Ogre"-it depends on who you ask. After that, there was a slide downhill. It's not that noticeable until you realize all the GOOD ideas from the later books were MAILED IN by readers and COMPILED into a story by Anthony. (Check the acknowledgements in the Author's Notes.) It's a "bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you" when Anthony complains about all the reader mail he gets when it's the reader mail that's the source of most of his good ideas. Similarly, the "Apprentice Adept" TRILOGY- "Split Infinity", "Blue Adept", "Juxtaposition"-was a great read, but he just HAD to drag it on, didn't he? What amazed me there is that there's about a dozen adepts, each distinguished by color and magic style- and Anthony was unable to keep track of them after Book 3. Don't believe me? The Green Adept. Does the following feats of magic in the original 3.... teleports turns invisible makes a warner-marker with a fire transforms someone into a fish Each time he does magic, he makes a magical gesture. Green is the Adept of somatic magic (gestures.) Tie his hands up-he can't cast. When Anthony resumed writing, he said Green was the Adept of Fire magic. He also said a reader sent him the list of who did what. (Stupid reader was wrong.) Later, he tried to fudge it by saying "whose magical gestures controlled fire". Well, that sure explains the invisibility, the teleportation, and the fish, doesn't it?... Anthony's books also often seem to slide into some allusions to deviant sex very slowly, almost like he's trying to hide the references. Except, of course, for all the references to the word "panties" in the later Xanth books, and the one he stuck that word in the TITLE of. (I refused to buy it or any later Anthony books.) BTW, unless you say what country the action is in, they only SUSPECT which country. Again, since you read Book 1, you recognized the towns in book 3. I mean, the USA has places like Athens, Glasgow, Edinburg, Rome, and many other cities with similar names to other places. If the writer leaves out the country, he should NOT expect the reader to guess it-unless he left in something obvious-like someone watching Prime Minister Major's address on the BBC. (Which, nowadays, still doesn't guarantee they're in the UK.) I didn't mind the repitition between the books. I objected to the CONTRADICTIONS. The "Wild Card" series was written by a handful of writers, and THEY didn't contradict each other, in the face of political events and much chaos. Good editing on behalf of George R.R. Martin, good coordination, or detailed writers? I don't know-all I know is they succeeded as a group at something Anthony does not as an individual. I still really like a number of his EARLY books. I just don't worship all his stuff, and the more I read his Author's Notes, the less I like him.

My commentary on the "Incarnations of Immortality" series.... This is one of Piers Anthony's series. One fairly consistent characteristic of his series is that they start out great, but decrease in quality as the series progresses. Further, he often has trouble maintaining the continuity of each series (he forgets stuff and doesn't keep a database.) This series was intended to be a 5-book series, which he extended to 7. In order, the series was "On A Pale Horse"(Death), "Bearing An Hourglass"(Time), "With A Tangled Skein"(Fate), "Wielding A Red Sword"(War) and "Being a Green Mother" (Nature). He then added "For Love of Evil"(Evil) and "And Eternity"(Good). I found the first four to be worth reading, although WARS was less so. The 5th book, IMHO, was ruined by his plans to set up the next 2 books. In the process, the writer contradicted the rules he established, primarily in the first book, and explained right in the story. In case you are wondering, among other things, the last 3 books, which seem to form a unit APART from the first 4, claim that the Incarnation of Evil, the Father of Lies (so-called even in this series), is really not a bad guy, just misunderstood, and doing the best he can in a bad situation. (Never mind that the office would supposedly go to the most evil person on the planet at the time of the previous officeholder vacated it.) Book 6 should have been called "Sympathy for the Devil", since it portrayed him in a sympathetic light all thru the book. Now, as for God Almighty, the last 2 books (including 7, which is supposed to be His own book, where He is the main character) portray Him in a specific light. He is portrayed as vain, careless, and totally uninvolved with humans, leaving us purely at the mercy of the devil, who is really on our side. A devout satanist could not have written a more blasphemous set of books, in my opinion. This was a marked departure, mind you, from the previous 4 books, where everyone acted pretty much like they should be expected to act, and Fate herself sees that there's a greater order in effect beyond her ability to even perceive events, and realizes that God is directing things on a greater scale than she operates at, just as her staff operates at a smaller scale than she concerns herself with. I recommend "On A Pale Horse" to all readers, and consider it an excellent read. I recommend "And Eternity" to those of you who want to see God portrayed as a do-nothing, and have no problem reading a story where a man has conjugal relations with a minor. Those of you who DO read the first four books... Don't blink. One character says that it is easier for a ROPE to pass thru the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven. (Where'd Anthony get ahold of that?) BTW, Anthony's able to speak for himself on subjects. He includes Author's Notes at the end of the books. In one, he complains that critics said book 3 took place in the USA, whereas it took place in Ireland. He complained about the carelessness of the critics. I skimmed the first 150 pages of the book after that, looking for the name "Ireland" to appear. I was unable to find it. Can't blame the critics for not knowing something that was NOT mentioned in the book. (Those who read previous books might have known, but it's unfair to REQUIRE one to have done so-the book should stand on its own merits in its own material.)

BTW, I'm a Monty Python fan who was disappointed with "the Meaning of Life". I recommend "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" as a "must-see", however.... ...starting with the opening credits. :D--> If you think that's funny, you can also try "the Life of Brian", which I also liked. It's quite funny, but not as hysterical as "Holy Grail". Plus, the very religious are often offended at it. (The same types who boycott Harry Potter.)