Posts by Reborn2002

24

Question for this forum???

by spectromize in

how many here still believe the organization is ahead of any other religion as far as teaching truth from the bible despite some of the wrong teachings that we perhaps have???.

i will be the first to answer in saying, i still believe we are ahead of any other religion for the present but it can change.

only time will tell wether the organization wants to adjust to some of their mistaken chronology and teachings.

Reborn2002

LOL Craig!

You were obviously digging around in the archives. You posted on a thread that had not been touched in 3 years.

42

Tonight, hope Kimberley ROCKS American Idol

by morrisamb in

i know most of you american idol watchers perfer clay or reuben...and they are both worthy winners...(last year i would have croaked if kelly clarkson didn't win!

)...but i'm sure you'll agree it will be more fun if all 3 give outstanding performances tonight and it's not a token night tomorrow!

Reborn2002

last year I would have croaked if Kelly Clarkson DIDN'T win!)...

Tamyra Gray anyone?

As I said in another thread discussing American Idol, I believe the singer who comes in 2nd or 3rd will be more successful than the actual winner of the competition. Why do you ask? Because the person who wins is contractually bound to the American Idol brand for an undetermined period of time. It has been a year and Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini are still doing American Idol songs and movies. That said, unless you are a diehard American Idol fan, you do not go out and purchase American Idol products. Someone who becomes more diversified is able to reach a much wider consumer demographic. As an example, Tamyra Gray (who was the bona fide best singer last season, bar none) was unrightfully voted off prematurely last season and did not win (nor make the Top 3). How did she fare? She has a recurring role acting as a character on Boston Public on FOX, and has an album soon to be released which was produced by multitalented and award-winning Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds (whom I would prefer to produce my album over Simon Cowell anyday).

The talent this season as a whole was immeasurably superior to last season. However I think if Reuben or Clay came in second place and decided to sign a contract with some major record label (Motown, Arista, etc.) and went that route instead of being always labeled "The 2003 American Idol winner!".. they would be better off in the long run.

Nothing against Kimberly Locke, but she has no chance tonight against the two male contenders.

Anyway, just my 2 cents for now.

23

Your favorite Dub Family Quotes

by johnathanseagull in

jw
friends

feeling particularly synical this eve.............here are mine, no particular order or context, what are yours?.

"at least we are good people".

"tut goat" .

Reborn2002

My brother looked me in the eye and said with all sincerity:

It will be a shame to explain to our grandfather (now deceased) after he is resurrected why you are not there. You were unfaithful to Jehovah and the entire family will live in Paradise and you will be a distant memory. Living happily though, eventually all of us will get over it.

Some love eh? He also told me this gem to my face:

Because you turned your back on Jehovah and the organization, I cannot allow you to be around my son (my nephew) and have a bad influence on him. I do not want him to grow up with worldly influences, much less someone who has disassociated himself. I know you are my brother, but I think it would be best if you have nothing to do with my family, unless you come back to the Truth.

My mom uttered this gem:

I tried to raise you in the Truth. Where did I go wrong? How can I love a son who turns his back on Jehovah?

My brother's wife told me this:

At Armaggedon Jehovah will destroy all the wicked ones. (tries to read me a Scripture) and because you were once in the organization and know better, you will be one of the first to go.

and for the grand finale which hurts me very much (as if the above ones did not)

My brother told me this the last time we spoke, when I tried to reason with him:

You are an Apostate. I never thought I would see the day my own brother could be so evil. Pop (affectionate name for my grandfather) would be ashamed. He would not consider you a grandson, and I do not consider you a brother. Reilly (my nephew) will grow up never knowing you, you are an evil influence, and I will not allow him to have that in his life.

These are not made up. These are actual quotes of things my family members have told me to my face. You want evidence that Jehovah's Witnesses are a destructive cult that divides families? Ask any person who has been shunned or outcast because of the religion.

I HATE Jehovah's Witnesses.

42

I saw a JW Elder at X-Men 2 Movie this weekend!!

by WingCommander in

jw
friends

i nearly fell off my seat.

this 30ish jw elder came strolling in the movie theater with his wife and a huge tub of pop corn in his arm to watch x-men 2: xmen united.

i couldn't believe the hypocrasy.........they teach not to even watch much tv, much less go to a movie.

Reborn2002

You didn't make me look like a fool.. my opinion isn't the same as yours.

This is not a matter of opinion. This is a question of you making apologetic excuses and outright false statements regarding the belief system of Jehovah's Witnesses. I called you on it, I provided documentation showing that you were wrong, and instead of acknowledging it you play bait-and-switch by claiming it is now a matter of opinions.

I think your anger at JW's is making YOU a fool.

Anger? Your damned right. Seeing my grandfather devote 50 years of his life to a lie. Seeing the remainder of my family remain Jehovah's Witnesses and disown me and treat me as dead solely because I choose to not remain in their religion. Seeing a nephew be born and raised into the cult and taught that I am evil and destined for destruction.. ya damn right I am angry.

You were once in the cult of JW, now you are in the cult of XJW's...not much of a difference as far as I can see.

A cult of XJW's? Now you are reaching. I have not met anyone in person on this board. Nor do I possess an interest to join any group or affiliation. The key is that as an XJW I choose to be informed about the hypocricies and contradictions found within Watchtower policies and doctrine, and in turn expose the religion for the fraud and destructive cult that it is... thereby aiding other people from ever having to suffer as I have. If you cannot see a difference, then you are truly DIM.

Think positive thoughts - you made the choice to be in the religion, now you made the choice to be out of the religion. This forum serves as a sort of comedic relief to my wife and I...everyone has to move on, don't you think?

Again, I advise your DIMwitted self to not open your mouth until you know what your talking about. I had no choice in the religion. If you took the time to read my profile before rushing to judgment, you would know I was "born" into the Jehovah's Witnesses with parents and grandparents who were all members. I never had a choice, and was threatened with being kicked out of my home if I did not conform. When I was old enough to use deductive reasoning and determine the fallacies in WT doctrine and the lies that the JW perpetuate and you by your statements apologize for, I took a stand for my beliefs despite losing everything I had ever known and left the JW's.

So, all in all, again you make yourself out to be slow in comprehension. I have laid the facts out on the table and you willfully ignore them. Next time I highly suggest you get your FACTS in order before rushing to judgment and stating opinions.

Have a nice day.

23

Are You Still Influenced By The Watchtower Society?

by minimus in

jw
friends

.

even if you've been away from jehovah's witnesses for years, do you still find yourself "under the influence"?

Reborn2002

ABSOLUTELY NOT

In no way, shape or fashion would I allow the Watchtower Society and the organization known as Jehovah's Witnesses dictate how I live my life.

They hold no power over me and possess no ability to instruct me on how I should dress, what I should watch, what I should listen to, my sexual preferences, or any of my beliefs.

If they have any impact on my life, it is a positive one in that now I take the time and effort to expose them for frauds and prevent other individuals from being ensnared by the evil intentions of such a destructive cult.

42

I saw a JW Elder at X-Men 2 Movie this weekend!!

by WingCommander in

jw
friends

i nearly fell off my seat.

this 30ish jw elder came strolling in the movie theater with his wife and a huge tub of pop corn in his arm to watch x-men 2: xmen united.

i couldn't believe the hypocrasy.........they teach not to even watch much tv, much less go to a movie.

Reborn2002

Hey Reborn,
You are a little smug, much like a JW.

Think what you like, I just harbor little sympathy or decency for people who make false statements apologizing for the Watchtower Society doctrine. I see you did not deny anything I stated, you simply chose to ignore the facts. People tend to do that when they have no legitimate rebuttal. Jehovah's Witness apologists sicken me, and your statements do just that, apologize for the mind control tactics of a cult.

No one ever mentioned X-Men from stage and no one cared if you went and saw it. Your outline was alot like many many talks I heard, maybe the people in the congregations just didn't care.

See my original post. In Jehovah's Witness-land, they did not need mention any specific film. It was a written rule that R-rated films are forbidden, and that action films which encouraged violence or sex are not Christian. I see you acknowledged the outline I provided.. and you say "maybe the people in the congregations didn't care." Then you admit their wrongs! If that is the case, then they were flatly disobeying their own doctrine. This again demonstrates the hypocrisy of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Admit it. I made you look like a fool. When you make erroneous statements, I called you on it and provided evidence showing you are WRONG. Until you provide facts to disprove me, just suck it up and admit it.

The original post in this thread is seeped in negativity and harbors resentment and revenge. pathetic. get a life!

When the Jehovah's Witnesses instruct people to not go to college and find a way to improve their quality of life, and instead peddle magazines door-to-door in a virtual free slave labor, or kill innocent children by an ever-changing blood doctrine, or condone the molestation of children by protecting the image of the organization.. there is reason to habror resentment and revenge over a cult which controls every aspect of a person's life.

You get a life. When you stop apologizing for Jehovah's Witness doctrine and practices and making erroneous statements or outright lies, then perhaps you can earn someone's respect.

865

WoMD ... so where are they?

by Simon in

now, the war is over, the weapons were not used and of course have not been found.. how threatening could they be if they did not even use them when being invaded by a massive force (of the countries they hate)?!

perhaps, as many suspect, they didn't use them because they didn't have them?.

now we're being told that we'll have to be patient and give them time to find them.

Reborn2002

Jayson blabbers:

Has anyone read even one book of scholarly value on this topic? Why does it seem that so many people are so sure that they have everything all figured out (Like the "Bush is bad" group needs to think very hard) not post of one book of value. Only bullshit. I know Simon has made it clear as mud that I have slandered him and his point of view and he refuses to play with me for now. I have that effect on closeminded people.
Really has anyone done any of their own research? Has anyone taken the time to explore outside of the oracle (TV) and the internet nonscholarly sites? For ex cult educated people you all seem to have it all figured out. There was no problem before Bush.

Yes. Read my last post on this page and then make a statement before blanket-categorizing everyone who speaks critically of your beloved President.

I refuse to do all the work for you. Educate yourself. I have limited respect for people who are lazy and unwilling to examine the facts objectively from both sides.

Bush has his good character traits (albeit limited) as well. Such as not being willing to cave in to pressure and (GASP) his principles (although I despise his interjecting his Christian faith into legislation and speeches, thereby violating seperation of Church and State with faith-based initiatives) his moral message is positive in nature in most aspects. However his bad traits FAR OUTWEIGH the good ones. Do you deny anything I have said in the previous post directed at dubla regarding the hypocrisy of the United States government or the background of George Bush?

Didn't think so. People have no legitimate rebuttal when they are incapable of one.

Why is this? No matter how hard they try to twist and distort things, you cannot discredit the truth.

865

WoMD ... so where are they?

by Simon in

now, the war is over, the weapons were not used and of course have not been found.. how threatening could they be if they did not even use them when being invaded by a massive force (of the countries they hate)?!

perhaps, as many suspect, they didn't use them because they didn't have them?.

now we're being told that we'll have to be patient and give them time to find them.

Reborn2002

It amuses me that some people pride themselves on being so patriotic that they fail to realize they are blindly supporting a corrupt Administration.

I notice dubla never DENIED any of the facts I presented regarding the hypocrisy of United States politics. He instead chose to brush FACTS aside and ignore them, dismissing them as "simply anti-war arguments that someone else can pick apart because it is too easy for him"... all the while continually supporting Bush on the pretense of WoMD that have not even been found. No facts, only promises without result at this point.

It amazes me how people exposed to the mind control and manipulation of the Jehovah's Witnesses allow themselves to be deceived both by the government and media in so many instances.

Politics. Let us discuss that for a moment shall we? Politics is a dirty business. A dirty business, a rough business, a nasty business. Most Americans accept that as though it makes sense, as though it's normal and right and proper. But it's not. For years, decades even, Americans have accepted the fact that politics - wait, let's define politics shall we? The political system is the way we govern the country, pass the laws we all have to follow, levy taxes. These are important things aren't they? But at the same time we accept people into that system whom we would not willingly invite into our homes, whom we would not trust to baby-sit our children. Does this strike you at all as odd?

We allow people into the political system who routinely distort facts, who twist laws in order to suit patrons who give them campaign money. Some of whom just plain lie. And we accept this. The media does. They report anything the government tells them and most of the time project it as fact. You or I would not accept that sort of behavior in your own profession would you? Medicine or science? Business or law enforcement?

There is something wrong here. This is our country we are talking about. The standards of behavior we demand from our representatives shouldn't be lower - they should be higher. We should demand intelligence and integrity, and politicians (both Republican and Democrat) fall short in this regard.

George W. Bush was arrested for drunk driving in 1976. He ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1978 and lost. The same year, he started his own oil and gas company, Arbusto, with $17,000 from his education trust fund. Arbusto lost money when oil prices fell. It was rescued from bankruptcy when another energy company, Spectrum 7, bought it out. Bush was named CEO, given Spectrum 7 stock and a $75,000 annual salary. Spectrum 7 lost $400,000 in two years under Bush's tenure and was later bought out by Harken Oil. Bush was named to that company's board of directors and was paid $80,000 a year as a consultant. (This is a man you want in control of and determining policy which manages the economy? When his track record clearly demonstrates that he is a failure as a business executive and everything he has ever touched has lost astronomical amounts of money?)

In 1989, he bought a 2 percent stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team with a $500,000 loan from a Midland, Texas bank where he once served on the board of directors. In 1990, he sold his Harken stock for a 200 percent profit one week before the company announced a $23 million loss. (This is the same man who harshly denounced the immoral accounting practices of Enron and Worldcom? This when he committed the same practices 12 years prior by selling stock for gargantuan profit before a plunge with insider information? You support this type of hypocrite running the country?)

Bush worked on his father's presidential campaign in 1987 and his re-election campaign in 1991. In 1994, he was elected Governor of Texas. In 2000, the Supreme Court declared him the President of the United States, though he lost the popular election to Al Gore. (For interesting commentary on this subject, please visit:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/45262/3.ashx (note my post on page 3 of this thread towards the middle of the page)

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/26786/1.ashx

Bush's budget cuts taxes for the wealthy and shifts the burden of social services to states, putting childrens program's like Head Start, Medicaid, foster care and housing assistance for families in jeopardy. He preemptively declares war on Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein without proof of WoMD, only promises and assurances (as yet unsubstantiated) that they possess it.

How can you defend the policies of a man like this? Partisan politics aside, be it Republican, Democrat, Libertarian.. it does not matter.

I am simply discussing the history of the man currently holding the most powerful office in the world.

Your willful ignorance is beyond me.

865

WoMD ... so where are they?

by Simon in

now, the war is over, the weapons were not used and of course have not been found.. how threatening could they be if they did not even use them when being invaded by a massive force (of the countries they hate)?!

perhaps, as many suspect, they didn't use them because they didn't have them?.

now we're being told that we'll have to be patient and give them time to find them.

Reborn2002

http://www.latimes.com/la-war-oescheer22apr22,0,1263293.column

Did Bush Deceive Us in His Rush to War?
The 'threats' that Hussein posed to the United States are nowhere to be seen. Now that the war has been won, is it permissible to suggest that our emperor has no clothes? I'm not referring to his abysmal stewardship of the economy but rather the fig-leaf war he donned to cover up his glaring domestic failures.
President Bush went to war with Hitler's Germany and found another Afghanistan instead. After comparing the threat of Hussein to that of the Führer, it was odd to find upon our arrival a tottering regime squatting on a demoralized Third World populace
Now the pressure is on for Bush to find or plant those alleged weapons of mass destruction fast or stand exposed as a bullying fraud.
Of course, our vaunted intelligence forces knew well from our overhead flights and the reports of U.N. inspectors freely surveying the country that Iraq had been reduced by two decades of wars, sanctions and arms inspections to a paper tiger, but that didn't keep the current administration from depicting Baghdad as a seat of evil so powerful it might soon block the very sun from shining.
And while Emperor Bush piled on the fire-and-brimstone rhetoric, his bespectacled vizier for defense presented a mad-hatter laundry list of Iraq's alleged weapons collection, as long and specific as it was phony and circumstantial.
Secretary of State Colin Powell's now infamous speech to the U.N. Security Council employed "intelligence" cribbed from a graduate student's thesis, documents later acknowledged as fakes, and a defector's affirmation of the existence of chemical weapons while excluding his admission that they had subsequently been destroyed.
Having taken over the country, we now know with a great deal of certainty that if chemical or biological weapons were extant there, they were not deployed within the Iraqi military in a manner that threatened the U.S. or anyone else.
Likewise, Bush's fear-mongering about Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program has proven baseless. There was no reason to hurriedly yank the U.N. inspectors out of Iraq.
Even Bush's only real ally outside of Washington, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is worried that the fearsome weapons will not turn up — or that a skeptical world will believe they were planted as an afterthought. "Some sort of objective verification" of weapons finds would be a "good idea," he said last week.
However, the refusal of the U.S. to permit the return of U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and his team to continue their work is damning evidence of our fear that the weapons simply do not exist, at least in any usable quantity or form. It also raises the suspicion that Iraqi scientists now held incommunicado in U.S. captivity will be squeezed until they tell us what we want to hear. Whatever happened to the prewar demand that those same scientists be given the freedom to tell their story in a non-intimidating environment?
Bush may fear the truth because the still-AWOL weapons are a potential tar baby for this administration. Undoubtedly the U.S. will find mixed-used chemical precursors for weapons, as was claimed only this week, but that is a far cry from being an "imminent threat."
As Joseph Cirincione, a top weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment, put it, the purported existence of those weapons "was the core reason for going to war with Iraq and the reason we had to go now If we don't find fairly large stockpiles of these weapons, in quantities large enough to pose a strategic threat to the United States, the president's credibility will be seriously undermined and the legitimacy of the war repudiated."
That concern is largely absent in the U.S. media, where "liberation" is now a code word that smoothes over any irritating questions one may ask when a Christian superpower invades the heart of the Muslim world. Its partner phrase, "the building of democracy," is also all the rage, as if real democracy was something you could create with Legos or SimCity software.
At this point, though, we can only hope it will all turn out for the best, and that a retired U.S. general will figure out how to use the country's natural resources to end poverty, build excellent schools and provide crime-free streets and an electoral system where positions of power don't go to the highest bidder. Then he can come back and apply this genius at home, where we've got plenty of unwelcome violence, poverty and on-the-take politicians.
However, in the unlikely case this fantasy comes true, albeit at an untold price in money, lives and human suffering, it should be remembered that this was not the justification for war given to the American people.
And, in a more sober mood, one must still ask the embarrassing yet essential question: Did our president knowingly deceive us in his rush to war?
If he did, and we are truly concerned about our own democracy, we would have to acknowledge that such an egregious abuse of power rises to the status of an impeachable offense.

865

WoMD ... so where are they?

by Simon in

now, the war is over, the weapons were not used and of course have not been found.. how threatening could they be if they did not even use them when being invaded by a massive force (of the countries they hate)?!

perhaps, as many suspect, they didn't use them because they didn't have them?.

now we're being told that we'll have to be patient and give them time to find them.

Reborn2002

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0304s.asp

A Stupid War by Scott McPherson, April 25, 2003
President Bush and his allies claimed emphatically during the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein was an evil madman in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), requiring an immediate preemptive invasion to topple his dictatorial regime and avert a nuclear, biological, or chemical (NBC) attack on the American people. An invasion of Iraq, we were told, would make us safer.
Far from providing meaningful conclusions on Iraq’s actual intentions towards the United States, however, this war’s swift conclusion simply raises more questions.
For instance, if Iraq did in fact have WMDs, why were they never used on the battlefield? Certainly, if we’re to believe that Saddam Hussein was so unstable that given half a chance he would fire a chemical warhead at the United States — knowing he would be devastated by the inevitable counterstrike — then surely we could at least have expected a comparable attack on U.S. and allied forces who were trying to destroy him. This point by itself raises serious doubts about U.S. claims of the Iraqi “threat.”
Now, a student of Soviet battle doctrine may counter that if Hussein was killed, seriously injured, or otherwise held indisposed in the first few days of fighting, his army would have been like a headless body awaiting orders.
Aside from being pure conjecture, this rebuttal doesn’t address the likelihood that such orders would have been given in advance. Allegedly, Hussein had been preparing to carry out just such a cataclysmic attack for months or years anyway, long before U.S. soldiers started heading towards the Persian Gulf.
And on that note, why didn’t he just order a preemptive NBC-type strike against the hundreds of thousands of troops massing in the Kuwaiti desert, before they had a chance to press forward across his border? It’s not as if the names and locations of U.S. and allied camps were kept secret — they would have been sitting ducks in the sights of this unstable dictator supposedly with his finger on “the button.”
Logically considered, the failure of Saddam Hussein to deploy WMDs of any type against invading American, British, and Australian forces makes the Bush administration look like Chicken Little with a cruise missile.
Which leads us to another, albeit most disconcerting, possibility: What if Iraq didn’t have any WMDs? This may seem unlikely, given Hussein’s past behavior, but if no smoking gun is ever found, the U.S. government will have a whole lot of explaining to do. President Bush, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld can insist all they want that the weapons just can’t be found or were smuggled to a neighboring state (“Operation Syrian Freedom,” anyone?), but millions around the world will seethe with anger and pray for America’s demise more than they already are — not an altogether comforting thought.
Another explanation may be that Saddam Hussein hates the United States so much that, knowing he couldn’t stand up to American tanks on a battlefield, he decided to hand over any WMDs he may have had to an organization like al-Qaeda. Pro-Bush types will claim that he probably had already done so, but this assertion has serious practical inconsistencies, the most pronounced being that it was box cutters and our own commercial airliners, not dirty bombs, that were the weapon of choice for the September 11 terrorists. Hussein had more than 10 years between the Gulf War and the September 11 attacks to launch a WMD attack on the United States, and it didn’t happen.
Moreover, Hussein and Osama bin Laden are hardly a good fit. Hussein was a secularist dictator; bin Laden is a radical Muslim extremist. The Taliban government of Afghanistan was more to al-Qaeda’s liking, which is precisely why they were hosted there and not in Iraq. Osama bin Laden armed with WMDs might have forced regime change in Baghdad even more quickly than the U.S. Marines did.
Ironically, Saddam Hussein would have feared this prospect before the United States started threatening his control, but with nothing left to lose ...? As Norman Mailer warned in Why Are We at War? published on the eve of the invasion, “We might vanquish Iraq and still suffer from the catastrophe we claimed to be going to war to avert. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction could yet belong to bin Laden.”
The conclusion of this latest foreign-policy drama, cooked up by empire-driven hawks in the U.S. government, is still unfolding, but we do have certain facts available which allow us a highly principled condemnation of the invasion of Iraq. We know no WMDs have ever been used by Iraq against the United States. We have also yet to prove conclusively that Iraq even had such weapons. In the event none are ever found, what then will justify U.S. troops on Iraqi soil?
Yet, should WMD stashes eventually be located, rather than lend credibility to the president’s warnings, it will actually make a mockery of them. How exactly do you explain a threat from weapons that have never been used, even under ideal circumstances?
And finally, we have to wonder at the probability that, facing his own inevitable downfall, Saddam Hussein simply threw caution to the wind and gave weapons capable of merciless devastation to Osama bin Laden, for use against their shared nemesis, the United States. When we consider that this most likely would not have taken place had our government minded its own business and stayed out of Iraq, then the grand total of the possible consequences and connotations of the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq makes this the stupidest and most unjustified war in our nation’s history.
Scott McPherson is a policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation.