Proponents of British Israelism know they are in trouble: They are desperate to find just the right discredited expert.
We have thoroughly debunked British Israelism. We don’t actually need DNA to debunk British Israelism because there are other proofs that it is a kook belief, including, but not restricted to archaeology, as we pointed out in snit. For those who require a more full treatment, we recommend A Foundation of Sand: The Lie of British Israelism by Silenced. As Silenced points out, DNA is the Kryptonite which destroys British Israelism — it’s quick and British Israelism exposed to it should die promptly in agony.
But, again, we don’t need it. If the proponents of British Israelism would just read the Bible itself, correctly without putting their own nonsensical interpretation on it, they would find that there is absolutely no words “United States” or “British Commonwealth” in it. If you don’t believe that, consult Strong’s Concordance. In fact, Byker Bob demonstrates that Ephraim and Manasseh were not lost tribes in British Israelism Revisited:
Not everyone inhabiting these lands was exiled! In many cases, the nobles, and the natural leaders were the ones who were carried off, while the average working agrarian types were left behind to continue working the land, and to be profitable to their captors via the tributes which were demanded of them. This scripture is very telling. While noting that “some” humbled themselves, and responded to Hezekiah’s invitation to travel to Jerusalem to worship the Lord, the verse also makes us conscious of the majority of the inhabitants who scorned and ridiculed the couriers. So, during the actual exile, we find significant numbers of members of the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, Asher, and Zebulun who were not exiled, and could not be legitimately described as having been lost!
Earlier in the article, Byker Bob notes:
Zech 7:13-14 is no less graphic:
When I called, they did not listen, so when they called, I would not listen, says the Lord Almighty. I scattered them with a whirlwind among all nations where they were strangers. The land they left behind them was so desolate that no one traveled through it. This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.
Conclusion: Zechariah 7 provides substantial evidence that Ephraimite exiles had in fact been repatriated to their covenant land following the Babylonian captivity, and in their initial enthusiasm were inquisitive regarding matters which would be pleasing to God. This is evidence that Ephraim was not lost.
Now this desperation is not limited to the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia. It is shared by the protestant ministers wanting to preserve and extend over a century of nonsense at The British Israel World Federation.
So desperate are they that they now have a slider on their landing page presenting 4 options as to who, where and what Israel is today. They are wrong, of course. But you know how it is with the delusional: They don’t realize how incompetent they are. It’s really stupid.
You just have to know that Robert Thiel has thrown his hat into the ring with his blog entry, Aaron Dean denies anti-British Israelism UCG rumor. Note what he says there:
Some have claimed that DNA disproves British-Israelism. But consider that in 2010 it was reported “that when teams of geneticists led by Professor Bryan Sykes took DNA samples in the Celtic regions of Britain they discovered ancestries in the Caucasus, which lay within ancient Scythia, and Mediterranean Europe” (Hutchinson R. Book review: The Highland Clans, by Alistair Moffat. The Scotsman – April 26, 2010. http://news.scotsman.com/features/Book-review-The-Highland-Clans.6223804.jp viewed o4/26/10). Thus, the travels of these descendants seems to have some modern support.
So the question immediately arises, just who is this Professor Bryan Sykes? It took only three minutes to figure that out.
Bryan Clifford Sykes (born 9 September 1947) is a Fellow of Wolfson College, and former Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford. That’s a good start; looks promising. He also has written some books:
- Sykes, Bryan (1999), The Human Inheritance: Genes, Language, and Evolution, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-850274-5
- Sykes, Bryan (2002), The Seven Daughters of Eve, Corgi, ISBN 0-552-14876-8 (see The Seven Daughters of Eve)
- Sykes, Bryan (2003), Adam’s Curse: A Future Without Men, Bantam, ISBN 0-593-05004-5 (see Adam’s Curse)
- Sykes, Bryan (2006), Blood of the Isles: Exploring the Genetic Roots of Our Tribal History, Bantam, ISBN 0-593-05652-3
- Sykes, Bryan (2011), DNA USA: A Genetic Biography of America, W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 978-0-393-07804-6
- Sykes, Bryan (2015), The Nature of the Beast, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 978-1-444-79126-6
What could go wrong? This looks like the most promising solution to the British Israelism dilemma. There are just three little problematic research projects which seem to have piqued his peers.
#1: The Cheddar Man
Sykes published the first report on retrieving DNA from ancient bone (Nature, 1989). Sykes has been involved in a number of high-profile cases dealing with ancient DNA, including that of Cheddar Man.
Cheddar Man is the name given to the remains of a human male found in Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. The remains date to the Mesolithic, approximately 7150 BC, and it appears that he died a violent death. It is Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton.
Excavated in 1903, the remains are kept by the Natural History Museum in London, currently on display in the new Human Evolution gallery. A replica of the skeleton is exhibited in the “Cheddar Man and the Cannibals” museum in Cheddar village. The death of Cheddar Man remains a mystery. A hole in his skull suggests violence, and Gough’s Cave was used for cannibalism, trophy display or secondary burial by pre-historic humans. Speculation based on scientifically investigated known ritual or warfare practices which existed during this early period is inconclusive.
Mitochondrial DNA testing
In 1996, Bryan Sykes of Oxford University first sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of Cheddar Man, with DNA extracted from one of Cheddar Man’s molars. Cheddar Man was determined to have belonged to Haplogroup U5, a branch of mitochondrial Haplogroup U, which has also been found in other Mesolithic human remains. Sykes obtained DNA from the 9,000-year-old Cheddar Man’s tooth and from a 12,000-year-old tooth found from the same cave.
Bryan Sykes’s research into Cheddar Man was filmed as he performed it in 1997. As a means of connecting Cheddar Man to the living residents of Cheddar village, he compared mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) taken from 20 living residents of the village to that extracted from Cheddar Man’s molar. He found two people who shared the same mtDNA as Cheddar Man, because around 10% of Europeans belong to Haplogroup U5. They, like anyone else carrying haplogroup U5 today, share an ancestor with Cheddar Man of many thousands of years ago through his maternal line. In May 2013, Craig Dent, from Melbourne, Australia travelled to Cheddar Gorge to visit Gough’s Cave following mtDNA testing which confirmed that he too belonged to haplogroup U5 and thus shared a distant ancestor with Cheddar Man.
Filmed, even. Impressive! But… but….
However, the Cheddar Man findings have been disputed and it has been suggested that the results were the consequence of contamination with modern DNA.
#2: Determined someone was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan
His work also suggested a Florida accountant by the name of Tom Robinson was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, a claim that was subsequently disproved.
#3: Alleged Hominid Samples
Dr. Brian Sykes and his team at Oxford University carried out DNA analysis of presumed Yeti samples and thinks the samples may have come from a hybrid species of bear produced from a mating between a brown bear and a polar bear. Sykes told BBC News:
I think this bear, which nobody has seen alive, may still be there and may have quite a lot of polar bear in it. It may be some sort of hybrid and if its behaviour is different from normal bears, which is what eyewitnesses report, then I think that may well be the source of the mystery and the source of the legend.
— Dr. Bryan Sykes, BBC News (17 October 2013)
He conducted another similar survey in 2014, this time examining samples attributed not just to yeti but also to Bigfoot and other “anomalous primates.” The study concluded that two of the 30 samples tested most closely resembled the genome of the palaeolithic polar bear, and that the other 28 were from living mammals.
The samples were subsequently re-analysed by Ceiridwen Edwards and Ross Barnett. They concluded that the mutation that had led to the match with a polar bear was a damage artefact, and suggested that the two hair samples were in fact from Himalayan brown bears (U. arctos isabellinus). These bears are known in Nepal as Dzu-the (a Nepalese term meaning cattle-bear), and have been associated with the myth of the yeti. Sykes and Melton acknowledged that their GenBank search was in error and but suggested that the hairs were instead a match to a modern polar bear specimen “from the Diomede Islands in the Bering Sea reported in the same paper”. They maintained that they did not see any sign of damage in their sequences and commented that they had “no reason to doubt the accuracy of these two sequences any more than the other 28 presented in the paper”. Multiple further analyses, including replication of the single analysis conducted by Sykes and his team, were carried out in a study conducted by Eliécer E. Gutiérrez, a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution and Ronald H. Pine, affiliated at the University of Kansas. All of these analyses found that the relevant genetic variation in Brown Bears makes it impossible to assign, with certainty, the Himalayan samples to either that species or to the Polar Bear. Because Brown Bears occur in the Himalayas, Gutiérrez and Pine stated that there is no reason to believe that the samples in question came from anything other than ordinary Himalayan Brown Bears.
OK, then… we’re 0 for 3. Three strikes, you’re (credibility is) out.
Nevertheless, in his inimitable way, Robert Thiel insists that this DNA business is just a fad:
As far as British-Israelism goes, some have suggested that it is anti-intellectual, but that is not the case. While it does not have most ‘scientists’ behind it, I have found that there is somewhat of a ‘herd mentality’ in the so-called scientific community. Which means, if something is considered widely accepted, most scientists and pseudo-scientists proclaim and defend it, whether or not they have actually examined it themselves.
And that is the case of British-Israelism.
Based on Thiel’s point of view, we should probably throw out all court testimony based on DNA. It’s unreliable. You can’t trust the science. In addition, those TV shows involving paternity suits will have to be cancelled because of science, so-called.
So this took us how long to get through?
You see our problem? We can go through and use science to debunk British Israelism, but proponents desperate to find just the right discredited academic ‘expert’ will find one and then stand there with their arms folded and expect us to try (unsuccessfully) to prove them wrong… all over again. This is endless: They will do this time after time, even as we prove them wrong again, time after time. They expect us to give them absolute proof, but are hoping that we will accept much less from them. Even after debunking Sykes, they will expect us to debunk Yair Davidity.
Yair Davidiy has written that the Germans who ended up in America came from areas of Germany dominated by Manasseh (Davidiy, p. 403)–he also reported that, while skeptical of earlier DNA claims, that more recent DNA tests tended to confirm the view that the scattered tribes in Europe and elsewhere descended from Israel was correct.
Wait!
What?!
The Germans descended from Israelites? What about their descending from Assyria? And darn it all, how does he know what the DNA of the tribe of Manasseh looks like? Really? How did he perform that magic? In order to have substantive valid observations, it would be necessary to find a body of a member of the tribe of Manasseh with intact DNA for analysis. No one has such a verified body. The best Yair Davidiy can do is suppose that some tribe he picks actually matches someone from Manasseh and then link them to Americans with DNA, but that link is missing. If the tribe went missing, then no one could ever find DNA evidence to support any claim at all. Not only has Yair Davidiy claimed to have found a tribe that matches (which is utterly impossible), but that the DNA shows that this particular tribe of Israel had fair hair and blue eyes. That is a preposterous claim and one which simply does not follow science.
We don’t really know anyone from the tribe of Manasseh… unless… it’s the Americans — at which point it becomes circular: We know that Americans came from the German Manasseh Israelites because we tested the American DNA and, darn it all, it matches the American DNA! What more proof do you need????!!!! Yair Davidiy is nuts… and / or he thinks we are.
Here’s what Foundation says about Yair Davidiy:
The greatest source of British Israelist garbage currently being spewed online is Yair Davidiy, operator of one of the ugliest websites ever and a supposed Jewish “scholar” who pretends to be an expert in just about every science that would be needed to prove the ideology’s validity. He of course has shown himself to not be much of an expert in anything. This naturally has caused him to be somewhat of a celebrity among Armstrongites and assorted COG members who look to him for the “very latest” in British Israelist “findings.” Anyone with a critical eye can look at his writings and become an instant skeptic.
In short, the body of published works supporting British Israelism simply aren’t up to scientific standards of peer review and have not been subject to rigorous academic critique. They can be dismissed on their face.
Before we leave this topic, the issue of ‘the 10 lost tribes of Israel’ needs to be addressed, because Robert Thiel says that there are only two tribes of Israel in the New Testament — Judah and Benjamin. Either he is an incompetent fool not having studied the New Testament or he’s a liar. You make up your mind which. The options are rather limited. We need only go to o-bible.com and the article Twelve Tribes of Israel in the New Testament to find that 5 tribes are directly mentioned outside of the Book of Revelation. Our favorite is Anna in the Temple who was of the tribe of Asher. For heaven’s sake, what’s Theil supposed to do with the priesthood made up of… Levites??!! Still, there are two tribes missing, even in the Book of Revelation — what with the 12 gates representing the 12 tribes of Israel: Dan and Ephraim are just gone!
Now consider British Israelism where Ephraim is the centerpiece as the British Commonwealth. Apparently, God is mighty upset with ‘the drunkards of Ephraim’, so much so that in the Book of Hosea, He lets them have it. It says there, “Ephraim is joined to idols: Let him alone.” Israel is defiled by Ephraim’s whoredom. Ephraim is singled out in Hosea 9:16-17:
Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb. My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations.
The last chapter gives some hope, but it’s not that explicit, and, apparently, Ephraim is rejected. If the British Israel World Foundation so badly wants the British Commonwealth to be Ephraim, fine. They can have it and all that comes with it: To totally disappear from the earth and never be seen or heard from again. And besides, if you really want to claim Israelite heritage, don’t you suppose the Brits should tithe, keep Saturday as the Sabbath and keep the Feasts? It was what the physical nation was commanded to do for physical prosperity — not that there’s any salvation associated with it, since there is no forgiveness of sin through the blood of the sacrifice of goats and bulls. Let them set up altars and make burnt sacrifice if they want to be a tribe of Israel. And don’t make your clothes with mixed fabrics. All the pork and shellfish products must go as well. You see — you’ve taken on a whole lot more than you can handle. And in the end — and in the end — it doesn’t really matter because Ephraim will be no more.
As a final nail in this coffin, we offer the link to the Catholic.com tracts, The Lost Tribes of Israel. The Armstrongists never knew the Catholics were paying any attention, but now they’ve taken a hand in debunking British Israelism. You should stand up and take notice.
We’ve established that the proponents of British Israelism are wrong.
It’s time they took their medicine and give up in defeat.
Thiel logic: Arguing against scientific facts with ignorant fallacies.
"Iraqi Scientist Proves The Earth Is Flat and Much Larger than the Sun"
This guy says the sun is smaller than the earth. Why? The Koran says so. This is the same kind of mind that we find in the Armstrong cults. They call themselves leaders.
Over at the False Prophet Ronald Weinland, one of the regular posters disclosed that they believe the earth is flat and presented their ‘evidence’ (the reaction was rather swift and somewhat harsh — mostly one of disbelief).
It should not surprise any of us that there are far too many Armstrongists and ex Armstrongists that have peculiar provably wrong beliefs. Sometimes we forget that the seemingly sane people sitting next to us in services for decades were certifiably nuts and it wasn’t just the ministry.
This should be very disturbing but for those within the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia, it is business as usual and insanity is accepted as normal.
Reminds me of a preacher I overheard once while sitting in a eatery. Preaching with an open bible, the women questioned something he was saying. His response was that it was true because “it’s in the book.”
Bob Thiel teaches what is not in the book and ignores scientific facts. He doesn’t even state that BI may be true, he expounds the teaching with authority. Some doctor. And the people who follow this quack are just as stupid. Never stopping to think. They are protecting their magical little world with magical thinking.
Over at Banned!, one anonymous commenter posted something about “DNA mumbo jumbo”.
Armstrongists don’t even try to understand something when they don’t have scientific aptitudes. Instead they mock it.
I would suppose that if someone who believes DNA is mumbo jumbo were to be arrested for a crime and DNA evidence were introduced, he could have his attorney object that it’s just “DNA mumbo jumbo” and expect the court to throw it out.
Armstrongists need to realize that there is a universe of realities which cannot be dismissed out of hand using magic.
Sometimes I become weary with the same old same old incessant challenges presented to us by the Armstrongites. This is done either by an endless stream of new people, or the same people who ask the same questions over, and over, and over, in spite of the increasing and more evolved depth and sophistication of our answers.
The mindset produced by Armstrongism is so deeply held that many who experienced it continue to attempt to find something, some morsel or nugget from that past, either spiritual or secular, that would convince them that their time, their life-long wrestling with their attitudes and behavioral patterns, was special and worth it all. That is akin to attempting to find something of value in a maiming event which wounds and scars the psyche, such as rape, rather than recognizing it for what it actually was, and vigorously attempting to recover from it.
Their teachers, especially their “original” Apostle, whom they revere as much as any of the chief Biblical figures who were central to the Bible, have equated in the minds of their followers their own teachings with the “faith once delivered”. They have literally superceded the Bible with extreme positions and untenable theories, and this is what passes for “the faith once delivered” in the minds of the members.
The passages in Zechariah from my article, requoted by Douglas, are very telling. The lost tribes do not exist separately and distinctly as identifiable entities. They were assimilated, in some cases into and amongst the Jews, and in other cases into and amongst the foreigners in the lands to which they migrated. Even what we call Jewish people today are by-products of King Hezekiah’s assimilation. This natural assimilation began with the absorption of the Levites, and the Benjamites. In the times of the New Testament, individual members of the tribes were identifiable and noted, much the same as Irish or Italian immigrants have been identifiable in our own melting pot. But, as time goes on, citizens of the USA though collectively known as “Americans” since 1776, have claimed multiple heritages, as in “Well, my grandfather was Italian, and my grandmother Welsh. And we get our Native American and our Dutch from my mother’s side” The lost tribes were not lost by lack of proper identification. They were lost to assimilation. As a group project, we have proven that there is nothing beyond a statistically negligible connection between English-speaking white people, and Ashkenazic or Sephardic Jews.
BB
And yet… if we neglect to address the challenges, the Armstrongists think that they have won. And that’s OK if we have already proved the point. Asking the same question over and over and expecting a different answer in this case is insanity.
Nevertheless, every occasionally the Armstrongists come up with questions we have not addressed yet, such as the discussion in this blog. They have infinite inventiveness in their support for the delusions of Herbert Armstrong.
Your analogy concerning Armstrongist leaders being seen as Biblical Figures (although, not the ones we’d choose like Satan, Ananias and Sapphira, Atholia, Jezebel and Ahab) is quite apt, but, if I may respectfully add that it is also like the respect that the members of the Mafia have for their Mafia Don. Here is a reprehensible man who is instrumental in overseeing murder, theft, extortion and law breaking of every sort, but demands — yes DEMANDS — respect! Wait! What? Why??!??! He should be disgraced and serving a lengthy prison sentence. Who is he that he should expect respect???!!! These people are the leaders of a cult — a cult we have proved not just wrong, but antisocial. There is not, should not and cannot be, respect for such individuals. Just why should we respect someone like Ronald Weinland who is now a convicted felon? It’s outrageous. It makes no sense. But just the same, the Armstrongists have such great respect for people who are not only wrong and screwing up their members with their lies and delusions, but in many cases should be sanctioned, mocked and even convicted of crimes. They some how get a free pass.
There apparently comes a point at which most Armstrongists who may have come to seek the truth no longer are willing to do so. In fact, they defend lies and crimes and the people who commit them — the same people who have a Biblical death sentence pronounced on them and from which Scripture commands to turn away.
The Armstrongists have allowed themselves to be corrupted and have totally lost their integrity.
True! So many people, so many approaches. Ian Boyne has ideas about “reformed Armstrongism”, expressed over at Ambassador Watch, and I am curious as where he might go with that. The problem is that there are so many things in life or belief systems that are inextricably woven together to form the total package. You cannot separate them, or in your efforts to eliminate bad, you also end up eliminating or modifying some of the things which you had identified as being desirable or good. So, the only intelligent thing to do at that point is to make a new beginning, based on an entirely different set of more harmonious threads. This seems to be lost on Armstrongites.
The basic problem is this: Armstrongism is such an extreme belief system and runs so far afoul of the basic goodness component of humanity, that you really can’t get someone to sign on without also teaching a huge fear factor. Once people embrace that fear, they are on the ride until it is over. The people who are still inside are still very much caught up in that fear, and they believe that anyone who has found a path around it is deceived, stupid, rebellious, crazy, or demon-possessed. So, in a sense, they are believing that being motivated by fear in this current life is their ticket for entry into the next life. What could they possibly expect there, except more of the same served up by the same leaders, with the exception that you get to meet their anthropomorphic Jesus, whom they have created into the image of these rotten, angry, drunken, tax-dodging leaders!
BB
Yes, I’ve been monitoring Ambassador Watch. It has some very disturbing features. I’m not certain I want to comment there.
Concerning your response: The Worldwide Church of God, Ambassador College and the ACoGs are one vast poisoned well. It does not matter where the water you drink from, it’s toxic, even if it comes from a place that looks benign.
The problem is — and I hope to cover this very soon — the poisoned well has sickened people touched by it at a very deep level, to the extent that they are totally compromised. No effort to dig an adjacent well will produce any sort of purity as long as it is contaminated by the original. Corruption to the very core of whatever is humanity has taken place.
Unfortunately, those poisoned by the parasites are unable to discern the sickness inside themselves, often, even after they stop drinking the Fool Aid. It is deeply ingrained and the toxicity just doesn’t wear off that quickly.
It’s amazing. I was doing some research in AR32, AR33 and AR34 about Chuck Harris and his murders in the Worldwide Church of God back in 1985. I knew him. I saw his 6 shooter he hid beneath his suit coat in services. I had his roommate (who was going nuts) over to dinner one Sabbath afternoon. Now it was bad enough that Chuck Harris murdered 2 and shot 2 others because he couldn’t have the white woman in the church he wanted. The Pastor, Dennis Luker should have checked. He had shot and killed his first wife in 1970 and was kept in a mental hospital for several years. He was married to a woman in Canada while he was ‘dating’ the woman in the WCG. Luker was blissfully unaware. Should he not have known? He was responsible for counseling the man who intended to marry Brenda. Why didn’t he know? Oh, right. Chuck was black and Brenda was white and the WCG was apartheid at the time. OK then. Problem solved. Just say no.
Meanwhile, Chuck had profound influence over the teens in the church, particularly the teen of a leading man and a teen of the local elder (who was busy with The Tracker at the time). I remember that Sunday morning at the Seattle Center where my wife and I went to see the cat show. There was a particularly charming Siamese cat who knew how to work the crowd and won first place. Outside, at the fountain, we just happened to encounter the Elder and his wife, where we talked for a time. None of us knew at the time that the Elder’s son had been involved with the shooting of a drug dealer (who had induced the two teens into committing sex acts with him) the night before.
Now think about this for a minute. This all happened in 1985 and it was certainly the center of some of the reports in the local newspapers and other media. One man had come — a mentally sick man with criminal tendencies — who had already killed his first wife and hid that he was married while stalking a young woman in the church. The congregation was unable to process this because they had been numbed by Herbert Armstrong and the WCG. Moreover, the ministers were inept. You know — the Bible says that they are to have charge over our souls — or something like that. It’s a responsibility which cannot be fulfilled by a church of the poisoned well.
And if you think this appalling, at the same time, a man whose teen daughter was a friend of our own daughter, was being raped — the man was committing incest with his own daughter. The ministry was willingly ignorant and the congregation was willingly complicit — because the WCG was a poisoned well which inhibited even a normal conscience.
This is like a low level long term fatal disease. It can’t be healed by just taking a few parts here and there and rearranging them. The social cancer of Herbert Armstrong has long ago metastasized.
The only solution is to kill it off and make certain any new environment isn’t contaminated. I say that with authority because of my conversations with the Church of God Seventh Day ministry where they tell me of the Armstrongists invading and contaminating the CoG7.
My take: There is absolutely, positively no way that any former Armstrongist minister to be viable to take or make any other congregation. This has proven as futile as it is toxic.
“Ian Boyne has ideas about “reformed Armstrongism”, ”
Not possible. Ian should go to the scriptures. In Matthew 7 we read:
17 “So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. 19″Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.…”
There Ian, you have your answer. You can labor to reform the Armstrong mafia family but you will fail. Just as Bob Thiel works his tithe farm in vain, so other also will not heed the advice in scripture and will work their farm that will never bear worthy fruit.
As Grace communion kills off the mother branch of Armstrongism, the flock will scatter and many will once again abide as the rancid fruit of some bad tree. A few will be honest with themselves and go off into the sunset never to be heard from again.
If this were the Star Trek Universe, with the modified timeline (ignoring the dates given in TOS) we would be near the era of the Eugenics Wars, and the DNA profiles of the entire planet would probably be on a database somewhere. Interesting that HWA was exposed to BI about the time of the Eugenics Movement in the USA, followed a decade later with a database of racial profiles (on IBM cards) in Nazi Germany.
As Byker Bob has written a number of times, BI and other fringe doctrines are so intertwined with Armstrong theology. In Ralph Orr’s paper on the history of BI in the WCG, he mentions that where Allen stressed that BI explains the blessings given the US and UK, while HWA saw that it was a way to interpret prophecy to include all the curses and punishments. So BI not only gave an ‘identity’ to people, it could be used as an intimidating tool of coercion.
Apart from denial of DNA evidence, splinters do have a way out – but again, Armstrong theology gets in the way. As Byker Bob has mentioned before, in Galatians, Paul states that accepting Jesus as the Messiah makes Gentiles ‘sons of Abraham’ (without the need of ritual conversion to Judaism). Gentiles who left Egypt with Israel were (somehow) assigned to tribes, giving them tribal identity. That is a way out, but, it generally would mean Christians who were not part of the Mythical True Church had Tribal Identity.
Another possible solution is accepting that many of the northern tribes did migrate (or flee) to Judah. Along with Jews, they were dispersed in the Diaspora. The idea that American Jews were largely Manasseh, etc, is a possible solution, but is also unlikely to be an unaccepted out.
A study was posted at one or more WCG-critique blogs showed when certain ‘facts’ were shown to be fallacious, the number of people who believed the alleged facts actually increased. Perhaps that is what the splinters are counting on…
‘A study was posted at one or more WCG-critique blogs showed when certain ‘facts’ were shown to be fallacious, the number of people who believed the alleged facts actually increased. Perhaps that is what the splinters are counting on…’
Otherwise they gather teachers around them that tell them what their itching ears WANT to hear.
GTA’s heir, Mark, and his man Down Under, Murray, excel at this. They deny any evidence that supports Global Climate Change. Mark is more of an ‘ain’t so in Tyler’ denialist (which reminds me of the Monty Python ‘Argument’ sketch) while Murray will support any fringe scientist who denies climate change. Several times I challenged them to actually state their position rather than just naysay the consensus.
Armstrongists believe that they are unique — they bring ‘truth’ the world has never seen before.
In actual fact, they commit errors of the very same sort which have been the bane of society for millennia. There’s nothing special about being totally wrong about science and the universe, but claiming that the lie you believe is absolutely inviable doctrine.
In the dark ages, the Roman Catholic Church insisted that the world was the center of the universe as a point of doctrine and those who opposed that doctrine were put to death. Galileo came along and insisted the earth was not the center of the universe. The Catholic Church had executed Bruno for the same ‘heresy’ but spared Galileo (after he renounced his opposition).
Eventually, the Roman Catholic Church apologized to Galileo and admitted their error.
It was only 400 years later.
Unfortunately, the Armstrongists won’t last another 400 years, so don’t expect that they will apologize for their error on climate change or British Israelism.
Still… it doesn’t make them any less wrong….
The closest thing to an apology that comes to mind was made on a “must play” sermon tape. GTA admitted his misunderstanding of Dante’s works; they were actually satirizing Catholic dogma, not developing it. Sheldon Cooper is not the only person who has trouble recognizing irony and sarcasm.
In line with this discussion, I would like to bring your attention to the “Kruger-Dunning Effect”:
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessment from those fun guys at Cornell University.
It’s pretty clear that with the incredible level of incompetence in the Armstrongist Churches of God with their narcissistic inflated egos, there’s not a chance that any of them could ever create a viable ministry of any sort after being a part of the poisoned well of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia.
Such people are incapable of even comprehending what competence is….
I have read that document some years ago.
While I am an extreme skeptic of what the priest or the politician has to say, it is my observations that doctors are the most arrogant sob’s just ahead of ministers on proclaiming some misfortune or malady. Everything is a disease and you ALWAYS need a drug. Bullshit I say!
If we look at the 10 “most” occupations that psychopaths find their filthy hands involved with, the politician is #2 while the general practitioner (lower rate of psychopathy) is not even on the top ten list. The priest (underrated) is at #8, (should be #3) while the surgeon is #5.
Regardless, all occupations have a degree of incompetence within the ranks. What I personally find is arrogance in all fields, by people who have been taught that they are noble and are competent, doing a work that benefits all of mankind.
This is all bullshit of course. Not every field of work does good for mankind. Many benefit only the masters who control the strings of propaganda that leads to financial gain for the few. Such are the churches of god. Fear is resolved financially (tithing/buying off god) belief is to follow a man, love is to those who believe as you do, trust is to those who deceive you, fellowship is to those you secretly despise. This is the armstrong churches of god. Plastic, insincere, without substance, and most of all, a soulless, cold corporation.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/01/05/the-top-10-jobs-that-attract-psychopaths/#27748c6973c3
Forbes has missed the mark occasionally in the past. For reasons I won’t go into right now, the #1 psychopath occupation is that of Psychiatrist (psychologists are in a different class) — ironic, since they are the keepers of the DSM (Drug Selling MDs). Psychologists may be trustworthy for mental health issues, but Psychiatrists are not.
And if you are an alcoholic, a psychiatrist could be the death of you….
Nevertheless, there’s nothing like an ACoG minister. Case in point is Meredith and the latest lawsuit against him (again). Maybe not all of them are psychopaths, but by giminey, pretty much all of them I’ve met sure match the profile.
And you know the standard advice from experts about psychopaths: The best thing you can do is avoid them. More people in Armstrongism should take that advice. They’ll be a lot safer, happier and probably richer.
My first corporate job was on a badly managed project in a poorly organized division of a moderately successful acquisition of a large financial institution. Two recent bestsellers became very popular amongst my colleagues – The Peter Principle, and Up the Organization. Although these books were not serious management texts, they did give us some insight as to the reasons behind the frequent staff movements, management reshuffles, changing organizational charts, so many “assistant to” positions, and, when all else failed, major reorganization.
While the WCG exhibited similar characteristics to my employer, I tended to apologetically dismiss them. After all, our CEO wasn’t an Apostle, he was just a businessman, and the middle management where much of the same. They had simply been promoted outside their respective areas of competence – certainly this did not apply to The Church!
In hindsight, the WCG probably was more badly managed and poorly organized than my former employer.