tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post3809265542531783446..comments2024-03-29T06:42:44.507-07:00Comments on Banned by HWA! News and Observations About Armstrongism and the Church of God Movement: "Chiseling Into Perfection": Bill Gothard, ALERT Academy and the WCGNO2HWAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018654662518613623noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-46978428463104690802018-07-19T20:30:48.565-07:002018-07-19T20:30:48.565-07:00I was hired to do some construction work there. We...I was hired to do some construction work there. We would see women ages 15 to 23 id guess be brought out into the yard around noon. some had very young children with them. There would be 4 or 5 older men looking over them. after about 30 min they would hustle them all back in the building. We wouldnt see them again for the rest of the day. very creepy place. Alot of red flagsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-83008615429702796332016-07-11T18:59:51.687-07:002016-07-11T18:59:51.687-07:00It is easy to prove to yourself that God is imagin...It is easy to prove to yourself that God is imaginary. The evidence is all around you. Here are 50 simple proofs:<br /><br />http://godisimaginary.com/Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-4637526834814053232014-06-08T20:25:19.757-07:002014-06-08T20:25:19.757-07:00They raise great kids! Healthy, contributing membe...They raise great kids! Healthy, contributing members of society. Power to them, maybe we can all learn something from them.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14866138962251232101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-85713650619644167062011-08-28T18:11:12.675-07:002011-08-28T18:11:12.675-07:00So back to the article:) which I did skim but got...So back to the article:) which I did skim but got the gist of it. All the weirdos show up at the fire sales when the other other weirdos go belly up, eh?Mickeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12447091547346560787noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-23665167855386023802011-08-27T21:41:27.112-07:002011-08-27T21:41:27.112-07:00"What is the point Dennis is driving home?&qu..."What is the point Dennis is driving home?"<br /><br />I'll let Dennis be specific, but to me, he's driving home the point that the whole thing people believe is astrological nonsense that has no relationship to what people think the New Testament is about. Jesus is astro-mythological fiction. <br /><br />Thus, Christianity is a gigantic fraud invented by Constantine and the squabbling bishops, etc. at the Council of Nicea.Allen C. Dexterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06615706118359802452noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-22699561309450960682011-08-27T18:43:50.385-07:002011-08-27T18:43:50.385-07:00No2HWA: Are you a former COG minister and Ambassdo...No2HWA: Are you a former COG minister and Ambassdor grad?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-53986298943895827122011-08-27T17:25:25.302-07:002011-08-27T17:25:25.302-07:00BB, Dennis wanted comments we gave him comments. ...BB, Dennis wanted comments we gave him comments. And, I think my responses are thought provoking too.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-54194748481186992172011-08-27T16:57:23.014-07:002011-08-27T16:57:23.014-07:00Thanks BB.
I facilitate a four year course in O...Thanks BB. <br /><br />I facilitate a four year course in Old and New Testament study, church history and theologians and biblical criticism. <br /><br />I tell every group when we start the year out (in two weeks - oy!) that I hope they do not find the answers they are seeking. Rather I want them to find more questions that lead to more questions. <br /><br />I tell them they do not have to agree with things or how other people have interpreted it over the centuries, but to look at it as an opportunity to say, "hey, I never thought of it that way before" and then to use their own mind to accept it or reject it.<br /><br />People walk into chruches, organizations, cults, and thought processes, and think they have to agree with everything they hear or read. <br /><br />The Rector at the church I attend knows that I tell people to never take what he says as gospel truth. Just because he said it, does't mean it is so. He enjoys the questions, and enjoys living in the gray areas of life. <br /><br />I prefer not having the answers, and enjoy the mystery.<br /><br />Like Dennis, religion/spirituality fascinates me. Armstrongism was not able to kill that fascination off, thankfully!NO2HWAhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02018654662518613623noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-24871055424007651052011-08-27T15:07:58.908-07:002011-08-27T15:07:58.908-07:00What the??? Do you guys who are complaining think...What the??? Do you guys who are complaining think you have to eat everything on the dinner table, or read every book in the library? Or convert to prolific posters' agendas? As if this is a new version of the WCG???<br /><br />This site consists of material intended to be thought provoking. You can take it or leave it, read it or not. The human mind was designed to be a tool of discernment. You're allowed to skim and even to skip, based on disposable time available, and level of interest.<br /><br />BBByker Bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15602697337552385535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-75228676571732142042011-08-27T14:19:55.835-07:002011-08-27T14:19:55.835-07:00Allen:
What is the point Dennis is driving home?...Allen: <br /><br />What is the point Dennis is driving home? <br /><br />Apollo is the son of zeus and the sun god the Greco-Roman tradition; so, Jesus as the son of God is astrologized as a Hebrew equivalent of Apollo or the new Apollo, or what?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-41811993695929511732011-08-27T12:50:35.516-07:002011-08-27T12:50:35.516-07:00"No matter what the subject is, he goes back ..."No matter what the subject is, he goes back to the astrology aspect, or Paul being a fake. Ok, so you told me. I got it!"<br /><br />The "astrology aspect" and Paul being a fake is where you find the root of the tree so you can pull it up and cast it away. <br /><br />I don't want to waste time arguing theological fine points that have no basis in reality because of those astrological aspects and the fact that Paul was a fake. <br /><br />Thank you, Dennis, for continuing to drive those points home so new visitors to this site will get it firmly in mind. Saying it once, to let in get buried in the archives, gets nowhere and allows the old nonsense which gets repeated season after season and year after year to get even more deeply rooted so it becomes an automatic way of thinking. Rather insidious, really.Allen C. Dexterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06615706118359802452noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-43184911117237703782011-08-27T11:47:03.955-07:002011-08-27T11:47:03.955-07:00Allen C. Dexter said...
I, too, didn't read t...Allen C. Dexter said... <br />I, too, didn't read the whole thing. Too wordy. But, don't lump it together with Dennis' articles. They're interesting all the way through.<br /><br />MY COMMENT: Yes, Dennis writes interesting articles, but he seems to repeat himself over and over again. No matter what the subject is, he goes back to the astrology aspect, or Paul being a fake. Ok, so you told me. I got it!Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07227542200969485271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-14757860377812957482011-08-27T11:40:10.046-07:002011-08-27T11:40:10.046-07:00It seems the general trajectory of this site is to...It seems the general trajectory of this site is to identify instances and techniques of mind control by other people, and then claim Armstrong or Armstongism, or the COG's satsify the critera.<br /><br />That might be fine for kids who grew up with parents in the church or for kids who went to Ambassador College, but it leaves out a whole group of people who simply thougth what the COG's said about x,y, and z were true.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-50302355013088875542011-08-27T11:26:36.500-07:002011-08-27T11:26:36.500-07:00Douglas: The problem with the simple cut and paste...Douglas: The problem with the simple cut and paste job about these folks is, it doesn't demonstrate factually the organization is similiar to Armstrong.<br /><br />We could say the same thing about the Boy Scouts or a military academy or a private boarding school, or a succesfull football program etc. <br /><br />You talk about facts as if they are lying around somewhere; if only we were to go collect and<br />classify them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-23640781544946019082011-08-27T09:15:26.710-07:002011-08-27T09:15:26.710-07:00I for one appreciated this. Sure it's long, b...I for one appreciated this. Sure it's long, but sometimes things have to be in order to expose things. In this internet age people are so dumbed down that they have to have itty-bittty sound bites because their brain can't handle lots of information.<br /><br />I have always had my suspension about ALERT, as well as with Harvest Rock. WCG (a cult) sold it's two major parcels of lands to similar cults. At least they had sense to not sell to the Church of Scientology who was originally interested in the Pasadena property.<br /><br />The internet age has allowed abused people from all kinds of chruches and organizations to have their voice heard. Abused people will no longer be silent.Free At Lastnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-14935743841873545802011-08-27T08:07:01.066-07:002011-08-27T08:07:01.066-07:00Yes, the contiuing dumbing down of the masses by t...Yes, the contiuing dumbing down of the masses by the Internet, as addressed by a number of studies and reported in various places, such as the March 2011 <i>Asimov's</i> in the "On the Net: New Brains for Old" article. Here is the Nicolas Carr perspective:<br /><br /><i>When he first began to notice that it was difficult to pay attention for more than a few minutes, he wrote it off to "middle-age mind rot." But now he attributes the greater part of his lack of concentration, his tendency to skip and skim and most important, his strugle to read and comprehend entire books, to what the internet is doing to his brain. The internet is transforming us into multitaskers and "heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability, likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set" according to a <b>2009 Stanford University Study</b>. Clifford Nass, lead researcher on the study, put it into layman's terms in an NPR interview. "It's very frightening to us, and I think the reason it's so frightening is we actually didn't study people while they were multitasking. We studied people who were chronic multitaskers, and even when we did not ask them to do anything close to the level of multitasking they were doing, their cognitive processes were impaired. So basically, they are worse at most of the kinds of thinking not only required for multitasking but what we generally think of as involving deep thought.</i><br /><br />Deep reading has become a lost skill. Analytical thinking has disappeared. People become instantly visceral in responses. We've gone from reading books, to picture books, to the Internet, to blogs and finally twits tweeting on Twitter.<br /><br />It should be no surprise that with this mental decline -- a real advantage to those who keep us in slavery as livestock -- that few have patience to even read the little I've posted here.<br /><br />Sad really.<br /><br />And what is worse is that it is now the problem of the one who took just a little <i>too</i> long in explaining the facts. It takes so much less time to express a factless opinion and move on without realizing that it makes no sense and the mind is shot.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-91772439575359041342011-08-27T07:40:47.045-07:002011-08-27T07:40:47.045-07:00I, too, didn't read the whole thing. Too word...I, too, didn't read the whole thing. Too wordy. But, don't lump it together with Dennis' articles. They're interesting all the way through.<br /><br />One of the earliest things I had to learn in writing was paring it down and discarding the unnecessary verbiage. Whole paragraphs can often be reduced to a single sentence.Allen C. Dexterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06615706118359802452noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-85481932257997976082011-08-27T06:05:52.902-07:002011-08-27T06:05:52.902-07:00I appreciate "Banned By HWA", but I must...I appreciate "Banned By HWA", but I must say that some of the articles, especially this one and Diehl's "religion"(not to say I don't enjoy reading some of Diehl's repeated philosophy), get a touch long-winded. Might be better to provide a link. If anyone is truly interested in spending a couple hours reading about this stuff, they can go to the link. I read a couple paragraphs, got bored, went to the end of the article, read a couple more paragraphs, and that was it for me.A person could go stir crazy reading the whole thing!Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07227542200969485271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-64294884989275083042011-08-27T06:01:37.309-07:002011-08-27T06:01:37.309-07:00People as Livestock
In dim antiquity millennia ag...<i><b>People as Livestock</b></i><br /><br />In dim antiquity millennia ago, someone got the idea that they could live the good life by reducing entropy for themselves by increasing it for others by making them slaves. Unlike animals, people can have fears of death and future pain which can be turned into profitable threats. Cow people into slaves and you can own them as livestock.<br /><br />Unfortunately, physical slavery is resource intensive. It is better to enslave minds with virtual threats rendered in an abstract way. Threaten people with an ever burning hell, convince them of the horrors of it and then provide the priest class to give them what they perceive as freedom from it, or if not freedom, relief. At that point, people are so grateful, they are willing to give their lives and their money to the Nimrod strong man who made it all possible.<br /><br />Governments, religions, movements of various kinds and stripes managed to cash in on this cash cow: Make people slaves through the stick and the carrot. Once established, set up your prison with Guards and Prisoners so that "order" will be maintained. Add another layer where your prisoners keep order by attacking anyone who gets out of line out of fear of losing what little they think they still have. Taxes and tithes -- it's all the same domination.<br /><br />We have so little freedom that in most of the states of the United States, there is property tax. You don't own your own real estate: The state owns it. If you don't belief it, then refuse to pay your property taxes and watch the property disappear at a Sheriff's sale.<br /><br />We have no freedom. We are all livestock.<br /><br />So now we have yet another abusive religion promising freedom through discipline -- albeit their own brand of discipline with the threats and fears attendent with their own particular branding.<br /><br />Some people look around and go, "Hey, I'm a slave!". Then they go about leaving that slavery and attend to finding another less restrictive.<br /><br />More power to them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-70230627814490384862011-08-27T04:40:20.216-07:002011-08-27T04:40:20.216-07:00Hard-to-read n going blind must belong to one of t...Hard-to-read n going blind must belong to one of these groups and are offended.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-90708133056106672292011-08-27T02:35:00.234-07:002011-08-27T02:35:00.234-07:00Yes, I have no idea what I'm reading about for...Yes, I have no idea what I'm reading about for the first seven or eight pages.<br /><br />Needs an SPS to start and then shaping up.Going blindnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226103369043606765.post-55481680552981616022011-08-27T02:33:07.431-07:002011-08-27T02:33:07.431-07:00This is a long and attention-straining article.
I...This is a long and attention-straining article.<br /><br />It needed a preparatory introduction, rather than thinking we would read along blindly through the many boring pages of details... <br /><br />If someone wants to start at the end first, you might can read most of the extended content.<br /><br />Good luck. Please rewrite.Hard-to-readnoreply@blogger.com