Posts by Gamaliel

My main concern is that if I'm paying for most of MIT, he better really want it, because I agree that it could be overwhelming. Medical research is his chosen career field so far, but I've seen him put so much more energy into other subjects. Your comment about "drinking from a fire hose" and the potential for "drowning" or feeling overwhelmed during acclimation are exactly the points I wanted to make with him. I just need to emphasize the point about serious preparation for a very serious level of work.

The second point was a question about MIT's policy on taking someone who starts a year or two at another college and then transfers to MIT. I wouldn't care about how many of the credits are transferable, only if MIT has prejudices against people who start somewhere else. If people have started out at smaller colleges and then transferred in (pre B.S.) at least it tells me it's not impossible. I'll be looking for some of this info myself, but just wanted to get a feel from anyone who had actually done it this way.

Thanks,

Gamaliel

20

Who Wrote The Bible

by stillajwexelder in

jw
friends

i have just finished reading for the 2nd time "who wrote the bible" by friedman and american professor but first published in london.

he gives solid evidence that the pentateuch was written by 4 writers who are called j, e, p and d --- and so on -- traditionally of course written by moses.

my question is 2-fold .

Gamaliel

stillajwexelder,

I have just finished reading for the 2nd time "Who Wrote The Bible" by Friedman and American Professor but first published in London. He gives solid evidence that the Pentateuch was written by 4 writers who are called J, E, P and D --- and so on -- traditionally of course written by Moses. My question is 2-fold

1) Has anyone else read this book and/ or similar - and what did you think of it -- did it (or other) shake your faith - help make you agnostic?

Yes. That book is absolutely worth a second read. It is the simply the best introductory review of the evidence I have ever seen. Of course, being short and for us non-academics, it skips a lot of other great evidence for JEPD, but it seems very fair in the selected evidence presented. I can't say that this book shook my faith since the Bible had already done that when I first gave it a first full read when I started at Bethel. At the time, I thought reading the Aid book would help restore my faith but the weak defenses in the Aid book were what really began to turn me agnostic.

What I especially liked about the Friedman book were the short segments reviewing portions of Bible history. Those were extremely well written. The simple explanation of Israelite meat eating, the reason Solomon married all those wives, and Solomon's gerrymandering of Israel, and his attempts to treat Northerners especially as slave labor -- a lot of these things I don't think I would have seen on my own.

2) What is your favored reading material of a religious/historical/philosophical nature now that you do not trust what the WTBTS publishes?

At the level of Friedman's books, I also liked Randel Helms (Who Wrote the Bible? and Gospel Fictions). Even with the sensationalist speculations of Passover Plot, I still liked Hugh Schonfield's presentation of the evidence he used for that book plus his further work in The Pentecost Revolution, The Jesus Party along with some other books of his. Hyam Maccoby also wrote some books that were very good at this same level: "Paul and the Invention of Christianity" "Revolution in Judea" etc. The books from authors that are involved in the Jesus Seminar are often good, and are beginning to replace these other introductory level books by some of these other authors for Jesus/Early Christian materials. The Jesus Seminar style pretends to be more authoritative, but it often presents a good concensus of the work done in this area for the last 100 years or so.

Gamaliel

edited over and over to try to get the quote boxes to look right.

2

For all former Bethelites - Does there exist a map of Bethel NY?

by truthseeker in

jw
friends

i was just reading whatsitsnames post, the 4 parter - wow what a story!.

and then i got to thinking does there exist a map of bethel, with all its buildings?

i am not talking about the farms or walkill.. are new bethelites given a map of bethel with all its rooms, stories and underground tunnels?.

Gamaliel

I believe we were given a small map that showed the relative positions of the facilities Squibb, 124 and 107 Columbia Heights, the Adams factories, Willow Street, the Towers Hotel, etc. I believe the visitors used to get a similar map. I'm thinking it even showed the path that was walked to get to the factories and the tunnel between 124 and the Towers. (You'd pass the laundry area through that tunnel -- ahh! the smell of thousands of socks all at once.)

Check out the links on this page on Randy's site to get info on each of the current properties in NY.

http://www.freeminds.org/history/wtinnewyork.htm

As far as hiding places, well I don't know how much good they'd do you in shirking your assignments, but the Squibb buildings were the best ones to take Watchman duty in. In the late 70's and early 80's there was still a lot of space they had never used. (I would always trade KP duty for night Watchman because I thought I needed no sleep from age 18 - 22.) I even took night watchman duty for friends as friends. And, no it wasn't because teenagers would sneak around the factory buildings at night to make whoopie on the slippery slopes between the factory buildings and the concrete culverts and retaining walls adjacent to the streets running nearby. The buildings looked so abandoned at night in those days, that these poor kids thought they had privacy -- but this is something I never took notice of. It never crossed my mind that a cup of cold water poured from an open window above them would still be cohesive enough (to feel like a slap on their bare skin) from about 4 stories above, and yet would disperse into too many fine droplets from 8 stories above. It never occurred to me!

Gamaliel

9

My son just got a full scholarship! : ) But not MIT : (

by Gamaliel in

jw
friends

friends, .

i'm putting this in the form of a question, but it should be apparent i'm a parent - and a bit too proud to keep this to myself.

i've been worried about college costs for my oldest son.

Gamaliel

Thanks, everyone. I'll take the advice and make sure we start applying for everything we can. I just went on a site linked from the "SAT/College Board." It looks like there are several small competitive scholarships (requiring essays and the like) that he should try. I see a lot of things like that listed and wondered how to find out the odds (ratio scholarships/applicants). But I guess it's better just to go for them and not worry about the odds.

Because my wife and I both work, financial aid of any kind seems out of the question. Also, he missed the PSATs for the Nat'l Merit Scholarship because we had to do some emergency travel at that time for a relative. (Then his high school messed up his rescheduling.) I had thought that full scholarships were only given on near-perfect SATs, which his weren't-- although he still has time to improve them with one or two more updates on his SAT score. I think competition for MIT might be a bit too high, even though his SAT scores are within MIT's acceptable ranges.

Must be their mother! :D

teejay: You are right, of course. lol. But I was smart enough, at least, to marry her.

{[+]} -> {[,,]}

Gamaliel

9

My son just got a full scholarship! : ) But not MIT : (

by Gamaliel in

jw
friends

friends, .

i'm putting this in the form of a question, but it should be apparent i'm a parent - and a bit too proud to keep this to myself.

i've been worried about college costs for my oldest son.

Gamaliel

Friends,

I'm putting this in the form of a question, but it should be apparent I'm a parent - and a bit too proud to keep this to myself.

I've been worried about college costs for my oldest son. He's just started his senior year in high school and he got invited to an MIT recruitment meeting in a couple weeks. This has me both happy and worried at the same time since MIT can cost $40,000+ a year. Now just last night he gets an offer for a full scholarship to a Catholic Jesuit college (St. Joseph's in Philly). We sent his SAT's to MIT and a couple other colleges but never contacted St Joseph. The scholarship is nearly $10,000 a year, every year, for St. Joseph. Up to this point I have been thinking about financial aid, loans, re-financing my mortgage, robbing our 401K's, etc. It never occurred to me that full scholarships really can happen.

Of course, we'll skip the scholarship and bite the bullet and send him to MIT if he's accepted. (AlanF, if you happen upon this post, I have a question for you.) My father was an engineer, and my major was Computer Sci, my wife's major was linguistics, but his interests are not as aligned with science or engineering as they once were. So here are my questions:

1) Has anyone here been to a Catholic college?

2) Does MIT have the enough "bang for the buck" to a graduate who may end up majoring in a "liberal arts" subject. Not saying he won't go technical, but he truly excels at history, literature, music and social sciences. (I've heard that Noam Chomsky has done OK with a linguistics degree from MIT.)

3) He will probably begin receiving more scholarships. Does anyone have good experiences with other colleges that offer full scholarships?

4) Has anyone had good success with scholarships not based on any particular school? Which scholarships are most worth trying for?

As long as I'm bragging: my daughter's time comes up next year, and I believe she will easily get into medical school or pursue a music career. (She's already sung "professionally" at a few places, including a Jazz club in NYC.) Her best subjects have been biology, chemistry and music. The biggest problem for me is that she's a junior this year; my oldest are only one year apart. My youngest son is only 10, so sooner or later we'll be looking to our children to replace our depleted retirement accounts.

If you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I had to take on a second (or third?) job. I guess trying to give your kids a good "launch" is what raising them was all about in the first place.

Gamaliel

93

My two week consulting trip to Bethel (the beginning of the end) part 2

by seven006 in

jw
friends

as we entered a door of the administration building we did not head to the elevator to take us up the eight floors to the main administration floor.

i looked around the room and asked, "what's up with her?

i was going to work with the elder from hell who ran the photography department.

Gamaliel

seven,

You can't imagine how much I'm loving this thread. I think if you had just been there a couple years earlier I would have enjoyed your class, too. Do you remember what year that was? Would you happen to remember if your buddy had the same initials as "Delirium Tremens." He and I used to speak in tongues to each other and most people would never guess that it wasn't a real language.

dmouse,

For some reason the picture brought back my best Bethel dining room memory. One time our breakfast cereal box contained an offer for free silverware, really good stuff, for a bunch of "General Mills" cereal boxtops. It wasn't the usual discounts from a Betty Crocker catalog, either. The cereal boxes that actually spelled out the free silverware offer was not well-known so I didn't have much competition. The sisters were more into these things than I was, but I was getting married within a year, so I recruited everyone from my table and a few other friends to blitz all the tables in each dining room immediately after dismissal. We collected a couple hundred box tops over the next couple of "cereal" days.

I had to mail my stuff out quickly, too, because even though the amount of sets offered was unlimited, the fine print said, one maling per household. Well, we all used the same address: 124 Columbia Heights even if we were at 117 or the Tower so if mine didn't go out first, then I was afraid I wouldn't get my wedding gift. I ended up getting so many matching sets of long forks, short forks, serving forks, knives and spoons of all varieties, and other assorted hardware, that we still use them today --a quarter century later.

Gamaliel

98

JW Father Kills Self and 12-year-old Son

by fjtoth in

the following story appears this morning in the south florida sun-sentinel at:.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-cmurdsui26aug26,1,2987431.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines.

fort lauderdale police suspect father killed son, then self in home shooting.

Gamaliel

amac,

It sounds like you were trying to keep the hype down a bit and not place blame thoughtlessly on the WTS when it may have been more correct to place blame on elders and CO's who came up with the bad advice themselves. I think a lot of people have already responded that there is some blame to go around just by the fact that the WTS allows untrained "blind" guides to be in such leadership positions. Perhaps it was a CYA move, but I agree that more has been done and said about this issue lately, although for legal reasons, the WTS no longer wishes to make a strong connection between appointment of elders and centralized responsibility for their qualifications. My "step-uncle" was a Circuit Overseer who stepped down because of abuse issues that were made public about his own children. He was personally anxious that these issues would go away and recommended that the abuser and abusee stay together for the sake of the organization. (It's possible in this case that it was his own bad advice.) I believe I already stated my sister's and my father's similar situation. (In that case, the C.O. participated in the travesty of justice.) Mouthy had a similar situation.

You've made the point that there is no paper trail with unwritten rules. But surely you remember the many District Assembly experiences that often included the sister with the unbelieving spouse who kept faithful, trusting in Jehovah, and "heaping fiery coals upon the head of the unbelieving spouse" by staying with him and putting up with his violence for years and years. I also noticed that you referenced published articles that recommend that the abused spouse leave. Don't forget this advice assumes that the spouse doing the abuse is an unbeliever, and JWs are much quicker now to separate the spouse in situations like this. It doesn't address the double-standard which is at the core of the pedophilia problem and many others: that the reputation of the organization is too important to sully with the airing of dirty laundry. When something can be kept internal, there is still a good chance it will be. JR Brown has been forced into some embarrassing admissions as well as obvious cover-ups, because of this same unwritten rule.

Gamaliel

93

My two week consulting trip to Bethel (the beginning of the end) part 2

by seven006 in

jw
friends

as we entered a door of the administration building we did not head to the elevator to take us up the eight floors to the main administration floor.

i looked around the room and asked, "what's up with her?

i was going to work with the elder from hell who ran the photography department.

Gamaliel

seven,

All I could think of was, how could this happen at Bethel and how could this of happened right in the room of a Governing body member...I sat down for a while and just couldn't think straight.

Uh-oh, I hope Leo didn't rub off on you.

Gamaliel