Oakspear

As far as my feeble memory can recall there was a site several years ago that was nominally an ex-JW site where a lot of us GSers went to for a while out of curiosity. There was a lot of trashing of Pawtucket and other GS posters over there, much of which went way beyond the line of criticizing a site that you have disagreements with. I don't specifically recall anyone being mentioned by name, but it could have happened. The attacks that went on over there, in my opinion, made the worst of what goes on at GS look tame. I was informed a few months ago by a poster who is a member at MoChat that MoChat is a different site and entirely different than the old ex-JW site. I have no doubt that this is technically true, but a lot of the same people seem to be involved. In my opinion it's easy to see why someone might see the two as connected and that what went on a few years ago taints what goes on at the "new" site now. In my opinion accusing someone of trashing Pawtucket at the "new site", especially lacking membership in that site, while technically not true, is understandable given the continuity among members, and that it was open back when it was still the "old" site. Excathedra was certainly among the more vocal of the Pawtucket trashers before the site became MoChat.

Yup...some of us are pretty intolerant about getting preached at, myself included, then there are others who offer that virtual cup of GS coffee to even the biggest @ssholes. Welcome to life in the real world. Picture GS cafe as a real bricks & mortar coffee shop. The place is full, one table is full of people chatting about their spouses & kids, another table has folks playing nostalgia games, one group is arguing passionately about politics, up by the front door is a couple of tables pushed together with people talking about TWI leadership,the pitfalls of TWI classes and what they think of Wierwille and Martindale. People come and go, the volume and civility of discussions rise and fall, occasionally the owner or one of the waiters has to ask people to shoosh, the bouncer hardly ever wakes up from his nap. Then, in through the front door walks someone who has never been in before. He may have lurked by the front door, listening conversations, or run in to use the bathroom, or maybe even gotten a to-go cup, but today he's going speak. He plops himself down at the front table and announces that all those at the table should get back to 'The Word', get over it and stop hashing over negatives. What would happen in a 'real' cafe? probably much the same that happens here. Several good-natured souls would laugh indulgently and offer the newbie a cup o' Joe, a few more curmudgeonly denizens might reply with variations of 'bite me rubber-head' and one or two might offer to take it outside. We're here to tell the other side of the story. If healing and nurturing are part of that mission, so be it, all the better, but we're not a church, we're not a charitable organization, and yes, we're a little rowdy and we're more than a little opinionated. And just like that 'real' cafe, we're not all sitting at the same table and we move from table to table, we show up in varying moods and varying levels of patience, and with varying caffeine levels!

No...that's why I used more than one sentence That's pretty compassionate What part annoys you? That GS isn't for everyone? Do you think it is? We're all different? Do you think we're all the same? We all move beyond TWI in manifold ways? What? We don't?

Citizens probably started referring to themselves as "Americans" because "United States of America" has "America" in it and anything else would be kind of clunky. As far as I know none of the other nations in either North or South America has "America" in its name. The country to our south is officially named Estados Unidos Mexicanos, the United Mexican States, or United States of Mexico.

You'd be surprised perhaps...new people show up here every month. You're one of those who had the guts to "tell the other side of the story" as it pertained to your own experiences. Greasespot isn't for everyone; we're all different and move beyond TWI in manifold ways Forgotten what? I don't understand I think that it does, generally. Many of us here don't like getting lectured or patronized, which is when compassion sometimes turns into impatience. is this the forgetting that you are referring to earlier in the post? Yes, it is easy to forget. I remember what it was like to be a newbie here. I also remember being given the truth by people who weren't afraid to hurt my feelings.

Martindale and his henchmen continued this practice.In response to his "Original Sin of Mankind" teaching in the WayAP class I broke down his contentions about the supposed sexual connotations of various words showing his error. Our region coordinator at the time, T#m H#rr#cks, replied that the text might not back it up, but it must be true "based on what we know about homosexuality". In my opinion, the claims that TWI was research oriented was thrown out there to draw people in, and ignored when actual research got in the way of Wierwille's pulled-it-out-of-his-@ss theology.

Penworks: I read something recently, probably in something by Bart Ehrman, that one of the reasons that Church tradition and apostolic succession became the rule, as opposed to solo scriptura very early on in Christian history was that not only was it quickly becoming impossible to tell what the "originals" had written in them, but there was much disagreement over which epistles, gospels and other "books" should be included in the canon. One of the parameters generally agreed upon was whether the writing was done by an apostle or other witness to Jesus' ministry. This naturally led to an abundance of writing that had the name of an apostle attached to it, when it wasn't really written by the apostle. There were competing gospels and epistles floating around, each espousing different views of who Jesus was and what his ministry was all about. Most of the more egregious departures from what became orthodox theology were stifled and for the most part disappeared (other than fragments and references in other documents) although not all contradictions were excised or harmonized, as there still remain many contradictions to explain. In my opinion there is no reason to suppose that any of the bible is inerrant.

One would think that what you laid out in the post above would be the default position and any inerrancy would have to be proved. If the bible was inerrant, it stands to reason that that would be demonstrable.

There's several examples in Wierwille's stuff that illustrate this, often when he is using Bullinger to back up a point...more than a few times he demonstrates that he doesn't really understand Bullinger's point. This is one of those examples. When you read Bullinger's section on this verse in How to Enjoy the Bible, you can see that Wierwille completely misunderstands Bullinger's point, that the Greek word in question refers to the act of letting loose, i.e. expounding, explaining, opening up, not the dogs set upon the game after they are released.

If you're doing good, then I, for one, salute you. But since you're "not asking for anyone's blessing or permission, nor will be persuaded or dissuaded from an endeavor that [you] think is right..." it seems you're merely concerned about perception, or PR, as another poster put it. That being said, if you're building your "ministry" on PFAL foundations, in my book, you're an offshoot/splinter.

Yup, the "accuracy & integrity of the Word" was never any more or less than what Wierwille said it was. I have long thought that PFAL, for all it's sloppy scholarship and kindergarten research, was a master work at getting us to buy into Wierwille's theology. Wierwille starts off by hammering on the theme of The Word is true, is faithful, is without error etc. Then he shows you that in modern translations there are errors, but then miraculously, through the power of research, solves the problem and voila! no errors. He spends a lot of time contrasting what mainstream churches teach with what he reads for us in black and white, all the while deriding the priests, popes and theologians for teaching otherwise, undermining our trust in anyone other than him! We hardly notice when he stops reading exactly what is written and starts slipping in his own interpretations, and most of us never realize that he's making up definitions and referring to texts and documents that exist only in his mind.

If I remember correctly, the original point of bringing up the pre-Christian resurrection stories was as a counter to Wierwille's claim that Jesus' resurrection was unique among all the religions of the world. It wasn't. The existence of slain & risen gods born of virgins written about since antiquity doesn't in and of itself make the gospels false, but neither do the gospel stories make these others invalid. I guess there are at least two ways of looking at this: 1. The Devil knew what God was going to do and set up other deaths & resurrections and virgin births to dilute the affect of Jesus. 2. Jesus' biographers added details from pagan mythology to his life and background to make him seem more godlike to the non-Jewish world. 3. Just a coincidence! If you believe in a literal interpretation of the bible, I would imagine that you have to come up with scenarios like #1 in order to make it all "fit". If you do not believe that the bible is a divinely inspired book, then #2 would make more sense.

I would agree with Rascal in that in would behoove you to have the facts before venturing an opinion. Now, you can have an opinion, and you can share it without the facts, but the opinion carries a bit more weight when you know what you're talking about. Another thing, being free to express an opinion doesn't mean that no one is going to disagree with you.

Your opinion of what works for you is welcome. What's not welcome is your opinion of how everyone else should do it your way.

Umm...we have moved on. All you see is a small part of our lives....a really small part. So, is GS a splinter group? I would define a splinter group as a group of ex-wayfers dedicated to advancing the perceived original ideals of TWI due to the belief that TWI itself no longer embodied those ideals, whether those ideals are fellowship, research or WOW burgers. GS doesn't do that. We "tell the other side of the story" with no other unifying principle.

I am so thankful that ClayJay is here to warn us and set us straight. <_<

Excuse me in advance if I'm not using the correct definition of axiom, but I'm going to take a stab at talking about axioms in mathematics and axioms in areas of "faith". The examples of mathematical axioms like A=A or A+B=B+A cannot, it is true, be mathematically proven, in other words there is no simpler premise from whence you can deduce that A=A. But you can easily test and demonstrate their truth even to a skeptic. I'm sure though, that if we worked at it, we could easily come up with examples of axioms that can't be satisfactorily demonstrated to a skeptic. (I'm not working at it, so I've got nothin' ) The difference that I see in the existence of God as axiomatic is that while mathematics generally falls apart without the basics axioms or assumptions, one can function in this world without belief in a God or gods. I understand why someone might conclude that a creator God makes sense logically and build their worldview based upon that assumption, that premise, but other logical worldviews can be imagined that don't assume a creator. While you can't do even basic math without the axioms of mathematics, you can construct a worldview without assuming a creator. Mathematical axioms are necessary, assuming the existence of a god is not. (By the way, I'm not an atheist - but I sometimes play one on Grease Spot )

Um...the one mentioned in the posts on this thread... <_<

Wierwille also was inconsistent about when he played the Devil card. In Jesus Christ is Not God, he uses pre-Christian trinities (many of which really aren't trinities) to prove that The Trinity has pagan origins, but ignores all the other things like virgin birth, the sacrificial king, resurrection etc. that occurred in pre-Christian religions.

The Mithra/Devil's Counterfeit is an interesting discussion, I have asked the mods to move it to it's own thread.

In looking back, the claim of TWI to being a "research ministry" rings the most false. I have no desire to get into arguments with my Christian brothers & sisters over the inerrancy of the bible, the existence of God or why the spell checker will accept no possible spelling of inerrancy, innerrancy, inerrency... Wierwille's "research", when it wasn't plagiarized, was simplistic in the extreme and depended heavily on faulty logic and outright falsehoods regarding translations of various Hebrew and Greek words as well as the creation of "shadow texts" that must exist or The Word (i.e. Wierwille's theology) would fall to pieces. While some of what Wierwille taught pointed out (apparent) contradictions between what most Christians believed and what most translations of the bible said, in many cases he avoided truly resolving the contradiction by mocking what he saw as an illogical conclusion and stacking the scriptural deck by emphasizing verses that backed up his own theology while discarding those that didn't by calling them forgeries, even when the evidence was lacking. (Apologies to all for the run-on sentence) While at one time I was dazzled by the b.s. and parroted the company line with the best of 'em, I cringe when I hear old friends talk about PFAL made more sense than anything else they ever heard...when know d*mn well that their choices have been [list1][*]The mainstream church (usually catholic)they were raised in which didn't teach any research principles[*]PFAL[*]Their offshoot which still reveres PFAL & Wierwille Nostalgia for the Good Ol' Way Days is usually a fondness for a time of ignorant innocence, when a genuine love among pals who were in the local twig overshadowed the b.s. that was coming down the doctrinal chute.

How about "Meetin' Fer Old Farts"?

Bullinger's "Word in the Stars" teaching, picked up by Wierwille & Martindale, included not only the zodiacal signs, but the polar constellations as well. At one time I thought (while under the TWI spell) that maybe there wasn't any people living in the southern hemisphere in those days! Ah...the good old days of not being required to think!Wierwille used to always say that "there are no stars in the North" in response to some obscure verse about hanging the empty places over the north or something. He never said what he meant by that since obviously there are stars in the North. Martindale "figured it out" to mean that there were no stars between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, which he thought represented 'The Mystery. He figured this out by looking at the star map in the back of "Witness of the Stars" where, sure enough, there aren't any stars between the two Ursas. The problem is, that while there are no stars on that quite simple map, and there are no constellation between them, any good stellar map will show plenty of stars, and even a peek at the night sky will show some stars in there, especially if you're away from big-city glow. Once, after listening to someone teach about this in fellowship, I brought it up. The person who I brought it up to, instead of just looking outside, asked the Region Coordinator, who told him that when the bible was written, telescopes hadn't been invented so that a lot of these stars were not visible then. <_< I was flabbergasted! I suggested that we all go out and look at the sky without a telescope and we'd see the stars! He wouldn't walk 10 feet to check it out, preferring to believe what the Manogawd told him.

I think you've articulated well what many people do without thinking as deeply as you do about it. I remember growing up in a very Catholic corner of southeast Queens and seeing the wide variety of Catholicisms practiced. Most of the people I knew sort of took the basics of Catholic doctrine as their starting point and built their own personal faith based on what worked for them. Then there was the "sub-cultural" influences: you could see a real difference between the Catholicism of the Italians and the Irish the 2 major ethnic groups in our neighborhood). I have memories of my parents, as religious as they come, pooh-poohing certain doctrines and practices that they felt didn't fit with the way they saw the world. I like the term "processed faith" that you are using. When you come right down to it, the faith that is deep inside you, whether it be straight from "the book", a set of axioms based on experience and observation and thought, or anywhere in between, is the one that is real to you and works for you. To a great extent your post, T-Bone, goes the farthest toward answering my initial question, people who claim to be Christians, yet are far off the "norm", are processing their faith just as everybody else is, they just aren't putting as much analysis into as some of us ex-cultists! Nonetheless, it still makes me chuckle when folks who are indistinguishable from non-Christians in practice are horrified that someone might claim the label of Buddhist, Pagan or even atheist!

Part of the problem comes from some folks' need to be led and others' need to lead. Sometimes the need or desire to lead morphs into a desire to dominate. Those who want to be led often just don't want to think. Maybe there's a critical mass where informal groups turn into organizations. Not sure, got to give it more thought. In the loosely affiliated bunch of people who I associate with for spiritual/philosophical reasons, there is no permanent leader. Several people open their homes for religious services, and the host often "leads" the services, but doesn't dictate to others how to run a ceremony when they do it. There are people who I look to as "teachers" in certain areas, but these people make no attempt to tell me what to do, nor do I expect them to; they're just sources of information. Many of the local people that I associate with have "longsuits" in some areas that I respect and defer to and I have "longsuits" that others defer to.