Yes!!! Trying to control peoples' behavior creates far more problems than drugs ever will. All victimless "crimes" should be eliminated. Drugs, prostitution, pornography, gambling, etc. should all be legalized because the consequences are felt soley by those who choose to engage in such activities. I know..I know the families of those who go overboard in this behavior suffer too but with that logic I can think of a whole list of things to ban from sky diving to snow boarding to shopping on line. Only those who choose to remain associated or dependant upon the abusers of these freedoms need suffer, especially in a modern culture where women have many job choices and are not dependant on the man for their sole lively hoods. Most of these vice laws were passed back in the past in a sexist culture where women had little choice if their supporting mates were squandering the family budget on such things.
Liberty
JoinedPosts by Liberty
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83
Legalize ALL Drugs. Yes or No?
by SpannerintheWorks ini thought it would be interesting to get a cross-sectional view of your opinions on whether all drugs (lsd, heroin, cocaine, etc.
be legalized so that they then became freely available to the general population, in the same way that alcohol and tobacco are .
spanner
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Types, Anti-types, 1st, 2nd, 3rd Fullfillments
by RubaDub inis it just my distorted, critical reasoning and viewpoint on matters or has anyone here (i'm still new here) ever commented about why things appear so complex and complicated?
i mean is it possible that a lot of the things we read in the bible should be taken at face value?
of course there is a lot of symbolism in the bible.
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Liberty
Good points Rub a Dub,
The Watch Tower religion is built on all this complex nonsense because otherwise it would have had nothing new to sell and would have been just another run-of-the-mill Protestant denomination among hundreds. Many of the dumbest concepts evolved from the constant tweaking done to explain an original idea that didn't make any sense in the first place. Revisions upon revisions which gave us such gems as the goofy reasonings about the literal 144,000 annointed class which eventually paints the Watch Tower leaders/writers into a corner which defies all logic because it was based upon nothing but imagination in the first place. Ray Franz called this complex rationalizing "mental gymnastics" and his uncle Fred was a master at this contorsionist act. Logic and facts have to be "reasoned" away so that the inherant contradictions of the Watch Tower dogma can be made believable by baffeling the audience with bull shit known in Dubdom as "deep spiritual thinking". Part of why the Watch Tower is in such trouble today is that Fred Franz is dead and no one else has his talent for "explaining" the unexplainable, the other reason is that so many of Fred's explainations were essentially time delaying tactics whose time has run out. The "Generation" teaching being just one of many that those left behind after Freddy's death must now deal with. Any application of logic to the basic Watch Tower beliefs will destroy the whole structure much like bad special effects can spoil the make believe fun in a fantasy movie. Once the suspension of disbelief is broken the whole thing unravels because there is no inherent reality there in the first place to hold it all together.
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Anointed Demographics?
by StinkyPantz ini was wondering if there was a list of the "annointed" demographics.
like, how many in each country; or of the ones in the us, what is the break down as far as how many whites, blacks, hispanics, or asians, there are?
it seems to me that since there are approx.
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Liberty
This was a great post Grits!!
I had no idea that the Society had made such a big boo-boo in one of their own publications even. Their stupidity is only surpassed by their arrogance. How dare they question the faith and sacrifice of people who suffered horribly and died under conditions that most of them have never even imagined. I'm an Atheist and still would never presume to call such faithful ones "professed Christians" since they died for their beliefs they are without question Christians of the highest order. If I were Jesus and I could choose for my co-rulers a bunch of spoiled Americans who died peacefully in their beds at 90 or people who were tortured, maimed, mutilated, burned alive, eaten by wild animals, etc. because of their belief in me....uhmmm... let's see...that's a hard one.
How these Governing Idiots can spin the crap they feed us and still sleep at night is only more amazing than the fact that so many of us once believed it. The whole heavenly/earthly class distinction is yet another in a never ending selection of wild speculations which, each on their own, prove the Watch Tower Society to be false at every turn. The 144,000 as a literal number doctrine doesn't even fit in the Society's own warped and twisted cosmology, like most Watch Tower make believe nonsense. It's such confusing crap that it looks like "deep" spiritual understanding but now we know it's just crap piled higher and deeper.
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Anointed Demographics?
by StinkyPantz ini was wondering if there was a list of the "annointed" demographics.
like, how many in each country; or of the ones in the us, what is the break down as far as how many whites, blacks, hispanics, or asians, there are?
it seems to me that since there are approx.
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Liberty
Good Question StinkyPantz,
One of the dumbest tunnel visioned teachings of the Watch Tower Cult is that so many of this imaginary "Remnant" would be white Americans living in the early 20th Century. Even when I was in I wondered how so many spots could still be left open if 144,000 was a literal number. Just the first few centuries of "pure" Christians who were tortured and killed by the Romans for their believes should have filled this number not to mention the "true" Christians tortured and killed for the rest of the 1700 years after Christianity turned apostate (in the Watch Tower's view) up until the founding of the Watch Tower Society ("real" Christianity reestablished in their view). Since so many of these folks died for their beliefs they couldn't have gone bad and needed replacing. I just had a hard time accepting that so many slots were left for spoiled Americans whose worse persecutions included a night in a modern jail cell or being chased out of town by a mob. This belief is stupid enough on it's own time merits even before considering the race/culture bias Ol'Jehoover must have if the Watch Tower is to be believed. If the number was sealed in the early 1930's yet most of the future growth takes place in areas outside the USA it seems pretty unfair. The whole thing is obviously made up nonsense.
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64
How Do You Feel About President Bush?
by minimus ini like him, but he makes me a little nervous.
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Liberty
Luckily we don't have to completely trust any one man as President in the USA because of our system of checks and balances. There are many intelligent and competant people who are there to regulate the behaviour or whims of any President since this office is not all powerful or dictatorial. Of the two choices we had last election I think Bush was the better of the two. Gore is just as much a spoiled rich boy as Bush and if Gore had won we'd still be negotiating with the Taliban and making deals with Bin Laden following 9-11. We were attacked, in large part, because of the weakness shown during the Clinton - Gore years. These ex-hippy utopeans, like Gore, believe you can reason and negotiate with fanatics. The truth is, that these wacko killers only understand one response to their antics and that is swift and violent retaliation resulting in their deaths.
I wish violence wasn't needed but some folks just don't understand anything less. I've had to kick some ass in my day with school bullies who were too stupid and violent to negotiate a "peaceful settlement" and only laid off after I stomped them into submission. Luckily I'm a big guy with the power to create a peaceful environment for those too stupid to understand the advantages of peace and cooperation. I'm a reasonable person who knows when to use the force I was born with. The USA is powerful but generally reasonable otherwise the rest of the world would be our slaves since we had nukes first. The rest of the world doesn't want to believe that but it's the plain truth. For all the crap we take from the ungrateful back stabbers we feed, cloth, educate, and defend around the world I think we've been more than reasonable and restrained. I don't agree with everything our government does but killing a murderous thug like Saddam who doesn't have the compasion and good sense to step down and save his own people ( and himself) the misery of an invasion will not keep me awake at night. All politicians suck, but Bush is hardly the stupidist or meanest ever seen in this world. Considering the mess the whimps Clinton and Gore left him I think Bush has done a pretty good job. When the Socialist/Commies are done destroying the USA from within the rest of the world's cry babies will wish we were still around as they eat their bread rations in a forced labor camp. "From each according to their ability to each according to their need"
Edited by - Liberty on 24 January 2003 11:8:20
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Dear Governing Body/Faithful &Discreet Slave
by somebody indear governing body .
i read this in an article on your "official" web site today.
it's in the index, under religion in the article called what is the purpose of life?
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Liberty
I often wonder how many JWs really know anything has changed. I'm sure most JWs don't know the Society now allows organ transplants and certain blood fractions. The rules are so complex and ever changing and the notification of change so well hidden or masked as something else that the rank and file JW doesn't know what is approved or disapproved anymore. These changed teachings were so intensly believed as God's own Truth that it might be hard for old faithfuls to even "hear" the change as they go on believing stuff from 30 years ago. The idiot who put this info up on the official site might not know that the "Generation" teaching was changed.
Edited by - Liberty on 24 January 2003 9:45:48
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Do we come here to "convince" ourselves?
by bittersweet in.
ok...so the other day my husband(he is still an active witness) starts questioning me about why i come to x-jw sites.. he said the reason people come to these types of sites,is to convince themselves that they made the right decision to leave the"truth".i told him i come here to get support from others who feel they were tricked into believing something that wasn't true.he knows i feel my life has been taken away from me because i wasted so many years following their doctrines.i told him it helps me to know i am not alone in my feelings.he is still convinced that people are afraid they are wrong,and just come here to keep finding reasons to stay away from the "truth".he doesn't understand that we know what the real truth is.. i was just curious what everyone else thought about this.do you feel we are "convincing" ourselves that we made the right decision to leave?
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Liberty
Hi Bittersweet,
I was out of the Watch Tower Society and comfortable with this choice for years before I'd even heard of the Internet. Anyone with an honest love of the real truth and an appreciation of cold hard facts can easily come to the logical conclusion that the whole Watch Tower ideology is seriously flawed at the very least. There is no question in my mind that, an intellegent spirit being capable of creating the entire Universe, would have done a much better job of founding an earthly organization without all the false predictions and other negative baggage carried by the Watch Tower Society.The facts speak volumes for themselves so we ex-JWs don't need to reassure ourselves that leaving all the doctrinal flip flops, cover ups, false predictions, false hopes, lies and corruption, which IS the entire history of the Watch Tower Society, was a good idea and the right thing to do.
Your husband needs to ask himself honestly why Jehovah would allow so many generations of His faithful followers to be given nothing but false hopes over and over again by His supposed one true earthly organization. I don't need "apostate" books or the Internet to tell me anything since I lived through the disappointment of several faithful old JWs who were around in the early days and were promised they would never grow old and die and yet they did. I was around for the 1975 disappointment myself and KNOW firsthand what the Watch Tower Society promised and how the leadership then blamed the rank and file for the failure when everyone knows that a regular JW doesn't have the power to predict anything without the Society's Leadership's approval. I KNOW for a fact that organ transplants were forbidden and then one day they become a conscience issue. I know Jws won't take blood transfusions yet they eat unkoshered meat full of blood everyday violating directly the scripture they use to justify their own no transfusion rule. I knew this long before I read any "apostate" material or got on a computer. Simple facts speak volumes and I was there years ago when they said that we would never make it out of the 20th century without Armageddon and yet here we are in 2003 and the 1914 generation is long dead and another flip flop made to cover this fact up. If God exists, surely He is not this stupid? Why would He allow the Watch Tower Society to be His earthly representitives since they are not only imperfect but completely 100% wrong all the time. Do we really need to reassure ourselves of this plain fact?
Edited by - Liberty on 22 January 2003 11:20:55
Edited by - Liberty on 22 January 2003 11:31:35
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Liberty
Everything everyone has stated is valid. We did learn much while JWs but we are still trapped into thinking things are important when they really might not be without our religious goggles on. Knowledge of the Bible in the modern age is about as important as having knowledge of the Koran, Book Of Mormon, or ancient Egyptian death spells. Bible knowlege is really only important if your culture thinks it is. Many people today who have no Bible knowledge live good lives and make fine livings because they spent their time learning valued skills in the scientific age instead of superstitious mumbo jumbo and skewed region specific history. I would trade all my Bible knowledge for a Computer Science degree. It is possible to have both but my Bible knowledge is really useless except when it comes to arguing with religious fanatics, so it would have been easier to just spend the time and effort on useful and productive knowledge for the real world. Also many of us paint a dark picture of ourselves had it not been for the Watch Tower's teachings yet most "worldly" people I know are not dying of STDs, are not drug addicts, and are not smoking so I think we credit the Society for far too much, which is understandable since we were brainwashed over and over again about how bad we'd be if it wasn't for the Watch Tower's iron hand to save us from ourselves. In short, any learning has value but Watch Tower learning tends to be over inflated by us exJWs because we are still hoping to find something positive in our years of wasted time and victimhood. We hope we recieved some benifit from our captivity but we should always temper that hope with a good dose of reality.
Edited by - Liberty on 17 January 2003 12:26:12
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C of C Just Arrived
by eyeslice incrisis of conscience has just been delivered by mail to my office.
i wouldn't dare let it be delivered to home in case my wife found out.. i am still "in", so the question is, should i read it?
and if so, are my days as a jw numbered?.
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Liberty
Hi Eyeslice,
Just being awake enough to want to read it means you're already on your way out. C of C didn't make me want to leave, as I already had left, it just explained in detail what my instincts had already told me about the Watch Tower Society Cult. I did come away with a better understanding of how even some of the "smarter folks" in leadership positions could be caught up in the fantasy and sincerely believe the lies just like the average rank & file JWs (me). The difference is that they were exposed to even more hypocracy and insider info and it still took them years to figure it out so I don't feel quite as stupid since they were duped too. Ray is a good writer and you really feel the way it slowly dawned on him that things were seriously wrong inside his life long religion with a top ranking family member responsible for alot of the problems. It takes a strong will to give up all the connections, prestige, and security in order to pursue the real truth.
Edited by - Liberty on 16 January 2003 11:52:6
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Question: ONLY ANOINTED ARE UNFORGIVABLE ?
by Liberty inminimus got me to thinking in his thread about the unforgivable sin and judging apostates.
i hope someone with a clearer memory than mine can confirm or deny what i remember.
i have some vague memory that the society taught that only members of the "anointed class" (144,000) could commit the unforgivable sin against the the holy spirit because only they had been called by it personally and, therefore, only they could reject it consciously and willfully.
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Liberty
Thanks for the replies guys.