Look for a foreclosure. We just bought a house which just last year was tax valued for $228,300.00 for just $175,400.00. The interest rates are pretty reasonable too. When else can you get $52,900.00 in equity before your first mortgage payment is even made? Even if the market continued to fall it would take a lot of dropping to erase that much equity. In just a few years I think things will be back on the way up even if very slowly. If you can afford it and can get a great deal now is a great time to buy.
Liberty
JoinedPosts by Liberty
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23
Real Estate, Good Time To Buy?
by Indo_Dude inis anyone else planning on buying in the near future?
with the bubble in real estate finally popping, when do you think prices will hit bottom?.
when my grandmother died, she left a small amount of money to me which will pay off my school loans, and leave me with some left over for a downpayment.
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21
Doublethink examples of Jehovah's Witnesses
by Mr Ben injw's are experts in what orwell called doublethink.
we often say that on this board.
here are a couple of doublethink examples:.
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Liberty
Back when Fred Franz was the main JW Guru he held two very clear cut contradictory view points as true at the same time. The Watch Tower Society (really Franz) promoted the idea that the surviving 144000 anointed were in direct contact with Jehovah's active spirit and were able to communally and mysteriously run the Watch Tower Society and provide "light" in the form of Bible interpretations and dogma for all non-anointed JWs while at the same time knowing full well that the W.T. Society had always been run by one or two all-powerful men who made all the policy decisions without ever consulting with the other members of the far-flung anointed (who in reality had never had any authority or any means to establish any form of authority what-so-ever). Franz knew this to be a complete contradiction since he himself was one of the two only real authority figures at that time and had worked directly under the others in earlier times.
Secondly, Franz himself created the notion of a Governing Body who needed to be in control of the Society while at the same time claiming that an inspired individual like a Watch Tower President or the Apostle Paul had every right Biblically to work outside the authority of the Governing Body even contradicting it.
Complete lunacy!
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What's the dumbest thing you've ever heard a JW say?
by Renegade inalot of you maybe stuck for choice so you can say as many as you want.
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Liberty
"This wicked old system can't possibly last another 5 years!" said in all seriousness by many JWs and heard by me on numerous occassions around 1970. Now almost 40 years ago!
By the way, just one of many stupid things JWs say.
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Finding Faith
by Ima Apostate inhow many of you ex-jw kids were able to believe in mainstream christianity after leaving the borg?
within the last year, i have opened up to getting to know god again.
what's funny is that when i prayed for truth and to know god, i knew and had a real feeling in my heart that i was getting closer to something real, but there was still a voice going, "hey, it's me jehovah, and you have rejected me!".
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Liberty
The argument Shazard uses stating that science and reason is just another rigid religion that people put faith in is pure nonsense. Richard Dawkins will not shun me if I disagree with one of his theories, nor would Carl Sagon's ghost condemn me to death because I didn't watch Cosmos or read one of his books. The scientific/humanist establishment allows you as an individual to believe anything you want. My Paleontology Professor at a major University didn't believe that dinosaurs evolved into birds which is a major departure from 98% of what other Paleontologists believe but he was still invited to their functions and conventions and submitted papers without any reprucussions because he backed up his oddball theories with evidence.
In science, if you have enough convincing evidence you can overturn any established principle. It happens all the time. Religion and science are nothing alike and reason is the exact opposite of faith.
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Awake 1980- Movie "The Exorcist 1+2 will cause demonic attacks and murders!
by Witness 007 inawake 1980 had a mission.
attack these two movies!
voted: "the scariest movie of all time," this is what was said about "the exorcist" and the sequel.. awake 1980 12/8 p.11 "since the release of "the exorcist some years ago, many reports are on file of the adverse effects it had on many who saw it.
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Liberty
I was terrified of seeing "The Exorcist" because of all the JW hype about it and how demons would sit next to you in the theatre etc.. Years later I got up the courage to watch it and found the special effects and the plot laughable. Now I live in the 21st century and realize that demons are not real and that movies made of film cannot conjure the powers of evil. The Watch Tower is 500 years behind and their followers are encouraged to believe complete nonsense long ago disproven by reason and science.
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E-mail to JW Ex-Wife: What You Can Learn Researching the WTS in 3 Hours!
by Seeker4 ini posted a thread earlier this week about a conversation i had with my jw ex-wife.
the next day i sent her this e-mail.
one should never be afraid of ideas.
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Liberty
Wow Seeker4,
Great list of easy to see problems that the Watch Tower can't truthfully address or excuse away.
What a load when a JW claims they are free to research anything they want. This is true only if they don't get caught and keep their findings quietly to themselves.
I really liked the factual tone. Good job. Let us hope your ex will see the light and free herself from this nonsense with your helpful information.
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What are some of your memories pre 1975?
by karter ingoing to an international assembly 1974 and one of the gb leo greenlees saying"this will most likely be the last international assembly this side of armageddon".. poeple selling their houses.. storing up food.. wondering what went wrong on dec 31 1975!.
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Liberty
I have lots of very clear pre-1975 JW memories. I don't want to call anyone a liar but I sure do get sick of hearing from supposed ex-JWs from that era claiming that no JWs they knew believed in all the Armageddon hype. That is just simply untrue. I know that no one could possible know the private thoughts of every person but the belief that Armageddon would be over by the mid 1970's was a cornerstone teaching of the Watch Tower Society from 1968 on until it was time proven false. Saying that JWs back then didn't believe in 1975 is like saying JWs really didn't believe in Christ's enthronement in 1914, no blood, no organ transplants, or that the Watch Tower Society was Jehovah's one true spirit directed organization. In other words, some JWs probably didn't believe some of this stuff but the vast majority certainly did, and any who didn't believe any of these "key" teachings knew to keep their disbelief quiet or they risked being thought of, at the very least, as weak and spiritually sick.
We risk falling prey to the Watch Tower's deceptions about their own failed predictions if we allow pride to condition us into claiming that JWs never really believed this stupid nonsense. I was there and the vast majority of JWs believed it and took foolish actions proving that they believed it. It was a cornerstone belief as sure as the literal Flood, an earthly Paradise, or the Resurrection. This belief in imminent Armageddon was the very essense of being a JW in the late 1960's and early 70's. All who say otherwise are either deluding themselves or are just plain liars.
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Noah's ark - Can't believe I once actually thought it was true
by sam_sane_now inwhen i was a jw i didn't even question that the noah's ark story might not be true.
i didn't realise that it wasn't achievable for a handful of people to gather literally millions of animals - two of each kind - and fit them into a boat where they would all survive for many days.
i didn't think about the fact that if the highest mountain was covered with water then how could plant life like trees and flowers come to exist again, especially so soon after, with the raven grabbing an olive leaf was it?
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Liberty
The Biblical Flood story is complete nonsense just based upon scientific/practical problems alone but it also makes no sense from the logical/moral angle. What problem did Ol'Jehoover really solve with His Flood? He kills untold billions of living things and lays waste to the Earth all so He could turn around and preserve a small remnent of the exact same imperfect evil-inclined life forms to start the cycle all over again?
This is evidenced by the fact that within just a few years of the Flood Noah is getting drunk and his son is having impure thought about his drunken naked old man. In just a few more years the world is full of so much evil that God has to disrupt and confuse the human civilization He had just preserved by confusing their language and scattering humans all over the earth from the Tower of Babel. To put the icing on the cake, according to the Watch Tower Society, big "J" will destroy it all again at Armageddon. So why again were humans preserved in the first place.... just so Jehoover can have billions more to destroy later???
If there were a God and He was really this wasteful, foolish, and illogical then nothing else would make any sense and any salvation plan would be based upon pure chance any way. The Flood story is just one in a number of perfect examples of the gibbering nonsense which is included in the big book of fairy tales known as the Bible
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6 THOUSAND YEARS OF HUMAN HISTORY ENDED in the year...????
by Terry in1873 [six thousand years of man's existence ends in a.d. 1873] {wr apr 1880 88}.
1873 "here we furnish the evidence that from the creation of adam to a.d. 1873 was six thousand years.
and though the bible contains no direct statement that the seventh thousand will be the epoch of christ's reign, the great sabbath day of restitution to the world, yet the venerable tradition is not without reasonable foundation.. if, then, the seventh thousand-year period of earth's history be an epoch specially noted as the period of christ's reign, we shall, by showing that it began in a.d. 1873, be proving that we are already in it.
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Liberty
Hi Terry, enjoy your posts,
I ran into an old JW elder from my childhood who was visiting my JW parents. He must be 75+ by now and had a young guy about 28 or so along. This young guy may have been an Elder too. In anycase, I just wanted to be polite to an old family friend so I went in to say hello figuring on some small talk and then I was going to go back to enjoying my day.
After the initial introductions the young guy askes if I was baptized and I said no I never was baptized because I was a skeptic about the Bible. I knew right then that the polite small talk was over but I felt pretty confident that I could hold my own with these guys and that, if I stuck to science-based skepticism, they wouldn't assume I was a demonized Apostate and shut down the conversation.
The young guy wanted a little debate so I was game and I explained my positions about how long humans had been on the Earth etc. and that the Bible doesn't jibe with several lines of scientific evidences I'd studied. He asked how I could judge a specific length of time for human existance and attribute it to the Bible. I brought up Bishop Usher who used to be quoted in the Watch Tower literature back in the late 60's and 70's (when I was most active in the JWs) because his soley Bible-based calculations added up to the 6000 years of human existance being pushed by the Watch Tower Society then for their 1975 big "A" prediction.
This guy looked at me like I was from Mars and stated that he didn't know who this Bishop Usher was or anything about his questionable timelines or 6000 years. I haven't been to a Kingdom Hall since 1982 but I realized then that they have apparently not been talking about 6000 years of human existance for quite some time. Another "key teaching" of the Watch Tower forgotten and denied. The older Elder never said a word about remembering this even though he was there and studied it over and over again and even gave talks on it. I brought up 7,000 year long creative days and I got the same response and another forgotten "key teaching".
The older Elder read a scripture which basically called me a fool and then shut the conversation down and lit out of there
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How did you find JWD?
by sweet pea inprompted by the thread about jwd v wts i wondered how many of you found jwd via the internet or friends/partners?
what were your first impressions?
i found this site through besty (husband) once my faith had crumbled after reading www.jwfacts.com.
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Liberty
I used to post on the Australian hosted H2O site and transferred over here along with other old-timers like Farkle as that site seemed to be dying or was being closed down. Is H2O still around in some form?