Oakspear

What do mean..."dress up like....?"

I hereby award you a GsD, a doctorate of Grease Spotology, when I find my little note pad, I'll write it out for you :ph34r: -

Been saying that for years

I doubt we'll solve to everyone's satisfaction the nature of God, Jesus and Elvis, nor unanimously agree on whether God's a trinity or not. Is there anyone though who thinks that Wierwille's explanation of why he believed the trinity to be unscriptural was well reasoned? Wow. All that scholarship summed up 8 words.

Trinitarians do not say that that the words "Son of God" = the words "God the Son". They do believe both of these things, but do not claim that one means the other. From an irrerant bible point of view, PFAL did a good thing in emphasizing that aspect. It is my observation however that once Wierwille reached a conclusion on something he did exactly what he accused the older denominations of doing and bent scriptures to fit his view. In my opinion, T-Bone and WordWolf do the best job I've seen yet of articulating the difficulties of harmonizing the various inconsistancies in the descriptions and atrributes of Jesus.

I have often asked that question about you O-man If one is going to criticize trinitarian thinking, then criticize what they actually believe, not misrepresentations of what they believe. There are contradictions (or apparent contradictions if you prefer) among what different parts of the bible say (or seem to say) about Jesus and his nature. There are verses that say or strongly imply that Jesus was God or had attributes that were God's alone. There are verses that say that Jesus and The Father are distinct. Trinitarians harmonized them one way, Wierwille and other unitarians another. Both theologies are an attempt to make sense of contradictory information. My opinion is that Jesus (and I do believe that there was an historical person upon which the Jesus of the gospels was based) was not God, nor did he claim to be. I also believe that legends and myths, especially those of God-men and sacrificial gods from paganism made their way into the initial reports of Jesus' life. Since I don't believe that the bible is the inerrant "Word of God", I have no trouble accepting conttradictions in it. But I do understand why someone who does see the bible as inerrant would be concerned about resolving inconsistancies (or apparent inconsistancies). In my view Wierwille did a poor job of making his case, misrepresenting what trinitarians actually believed, placing a lot of emphasis on three-in-one gods from paganism (and getting in largely wrong - some of his examples were not three gods in one) but missing the obvious next step - that the whole sacrificial god, born-of-a-virgin redeemer thing came straight out of paganism too.

Looks like a Weenie vet if I'm not mistaken

My point, as always with anything Wierwille taught, is check it out, and make sure you aren't interpreting what you check out in light of something else Wierwille taught. I think that the context of the whole psalm does more to indicate that "the death of his saints" isn't a good thing than the literal meaning of the word itself. Because the source you cited does not indicate that yaqar primarily means "costly" in the negative sense in that it's a drain on your resources, but "costly" as in you have something valuable at hand. A 10 million dollar diamond's costliness is different when you have it in your possession, and can enjoy its costliness, from not having it, but desiring it from the other side of the plate glass. Back to context: the psalm talks about deliverance from death, and several other uses of yaqar in other psalms clearly indicate the negative use of "costly". So it's the context, not the unambiguous definition of the word translated "precious" that gets us to the "correct" answer. Analyzing anything that Wierwille taught takes more than simply reading a verse in the bible and verifying that it said what he said it said (whew, typing that sentence made me dizzy) - because his plain reading of "what is written" is liberally sprinkled with unwarranted assumptions and supported by incorrect definitions of Greek and Hebrew words. In this case, I believe that he was correct, but IMHO a biblical scholar would be wise to question anything that was taught in PFAL, including the underlying assumptions, definitions, "orientalisms" and conclusions, even such things as the "keys" to research themselves.

witchcrafting is when witches amke those little doilies and scrapbooks

Oh thanks, then it's okay then?

Good point Bramble...although Seth asked folks to imagine if they found irefutable proof that there is no God, not imagine if you were an atheist, slightly different things. It would be a hard thing to do IMHO, because even the atheists among us don't have irefutable proof. People tend to take their own experiences and points of view and project them outward. A committed theist might be able to imagine life as an atheist, but imagine that life without God would be empty and therefore full of bad and depressing things; an atheist might imagine that life as a theist would be one of blindly following myths and legends, unable to think for oneself...both because that's how they believe that the other side thinks and feels. For those like wrdsandwrks who turned their life around through a faith in God: while I have no problem believing that religion can be a factor in turning someone's life around, and consider it very unlikely that such a person would go back to atheism, I also consider it unlikely that in the hypothetical situation that Seth described, that a happy, well-adjusted, moral, loving person would suddenly revert to a depressed druggie with no will to love. (Of course that's just my opinion, since we'll never know...we'll never prove or disprove the existance of God or gods, will we?) People who decide to improve their lot often associate what they surrounded themselves with during the bad times with the bad times, i.e. an atheist turned Christian might associate atheism with their sad lot pre-conversion; a religious person turned atheist might blame religion for their previous problems, it's all in the perspective.

Abi did correctly I.D. me using an old handle...and is that Borat? Or is it my favorite omelette maker?

Smartly outfitted in a blue GSC sweatshirt no less

I don't know what it means, and I haven't investigated it lately. My point is that I don't believe that you did either and that a lot of what Wierwille taught us stuck in our brains simply because it sounded good or was comforting in some manner, not because he could back it up with any kind of evidence.Yes, it makes sense it light of the belief that God doesn't kill people, but does the word translated "precious" actual mean "costly"?

Let's see, you were there, but you found out about it a week later? :huh:

Huh? What is your point? (No sarcasm or rudeness intended)

IMHO he confused "literal" seed with figurative.

Indeed, I think that helps make the point that WW was making. People at different points in the cycle, experiencing and interpreting things differently...there was no "one" TWI...I'll PM you to see if I can guess who the a-hole was

I don't have anybody on "ignore" - must have missed your mention of it. I just went back and found it 2 pages back.

Sprawled - I was on Long Island that same year, although not in your branch; it was right before I went WOW and less than 2 years after I first took PFAL. Overall I'd say that most of you Branch Leaders were decent folks, and as I recall, none of you were Corps grads either. But absence of BS? No way. There were red flags even then.

Would it have been just as "beautiful" if Mr. Erection had placed a man's hand on his pants (containing the erection), remarking that he hadn't had one of those in 20 years?

I think it was Ryebread, a poster we don't see around these days, who said that she got out in 1973 and things were getting ugly then.

To be consistant, you had to believe that the country was going to h*ll in a handbasket, and like those who spout false prophesies everywhere, you have to backpedal when it doesn't come true.

I also agree that the purpose of the 4 crucified teaching was to show that all bible contradictions were only apparent, not actual. I'm not so sure that he was successful though. The problem that I see with the position that the bible "fits like a hand in a glove" is that it doesn't, unless you sew on some extra fingers, cut some holes, reinforce the stitching and redefine both "hand" and "glove". Okay, I'm exaggerating a little ;) - but I think that the point is valid. The problems go away when you give up the idea that the bible is 100% internally consistant. And I'm not saying that to put down Christians or the bible, plenty of Christians live a godly life without believing that the bible is inerrant and totally from the lips of God. But I do see where it all came from, a desire to believe that "The Book" is a foolproof guide to life. That desire is frustrated when glaring inconsistancies and contradictions stare you in the face, so you have to find a way to reconcile them. The result is 4 crucified, or 6 denials, or for that matter the doctrine of the Trinity <_<

Larry: I'm not an atheist, but am a non-Christian, maybe some of my reasons are the same: 1. I enjoy the intellectual give-and-take. It's fun 2. I'm interested in discussing whether what we learned in TWI was legitimate bible or was a bunch of b.s. - one of the common reasons why people stayed in TWI and some are still in is that they believe that what we were taught was "THE Word of God" and that fact alone makes it worth enduring any of the negatives. When specific TWI teachings are shown to be at odds with what the bible says, then that foundation is undermined. Getting involved in these doctrinal discussion cam help do that. 3. I enjoy hearing why some Christians believe the way that they do - I like knowing what makes people tick 4. I no longer accept the bible as god-breathed or as my standard in any fashion - but I'm not irrational about it. If there is good to be gleaned from it then I'm in!