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Zixar

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Posts posted by Zixar

  1. quote:
    Originally posted by searcher:

    Thank You Zixar,

    Your post explains things so well I could almost be there, for, although I have never been in a cult, I have been a part of things that stated off good, then were taken over by, for want of a better phrase, power hungry a**holes.

    Bingo. Although there are those who say it didn't even start off good, that's a fair enough description.

    It is a pity that so many horrible things have been done in the name of god, but then, so many wonderful things have been done in his name also.

    True.

    Bad things done in the name of god are the main reason I dont believe. I will explain if I can.

    Religion is based on the bible, I have read the bible many times, both from front to back (several times) and in sections, I find it confusing, contradictory and inciteful.

    ObligatoryNitPick: "Inciteful" isn't a word. icon_wink.gif;)--> "Inciting" is closer.

    Please dont get me wrong, I am not 'bashing' this is just what I see, and I do have good reading comprehension.

    I understand. My experience was slightly different, in that I couldn't reconcile what the Church was saying with what the Bible was saying. So, if the Church couldn't keep its story straight after centuries of theological study, perhaps they were looking at it the wrong way to start with.

    The only reason I am saying this is that, as I see it, what I said above about the bible is why there are so many different groups and beliefs, it seems there are almost as many different 'interpritations' as there are people.

    Absolutely. Yet, if the premise of God is correct, the interpretations can't possibly all be correct. In light of that, either a) God doesn't exist after all, or b) there's only one correct belief system, which, unfortunately, no one has discovered completely. Most corrupt preachers stop as soon as they've "interpreted" themselves a way to get rich, laid, or powerful off of the flock's belief.

    It seems that the problem is people.

    Ok, so far so good. Except that, instead of God, what you've demonstrated is a case for not believing in PEOPLE. (rather, not believing in the religions that people create.)

    If you want to read some of the other times we've gone over similar territory, do a search here for the word "pony". icon_wink.gif;)-->


  2. I was wondering when someone would get around to posting that.

    I'd quote the filth that elicited that post, except that:

    a) It wouldn't make it past the moderators due to all the obscene language, and

    b) It's still available for public view here and here as well as a couple of other threads.

    If you weren't involved in the trolling there, P-Mosh, I'd apologize, except that now you're starting a new troll off of Raf's site instead. Looks like the list was correct in the first place.

    But, please, report it to the site moderators for appropriate action. By all means. The site obviously needs less of people like me and more of people like you. Maybe you can teach Todd how to say "monkeyc***", too. Lord knows we don't see much of that around here now.

  3. Doorleven: Yes, I have. Matter of fact, I prefer them now to standard woven boxers or knit briefs. They aren't as constricting as briefs, and yet they give much more support than boxers. Better still, since they're knit and not woven, they stretch instead of bunching up.

    I used to wonder why my wife bought me the gray ones... Learn something new every day! icon_wink.gif;)-->

  4. searcher: To be fair, it wasn't all bad. You don't build a 100,000-member cult by daily disembowelings. The experience varied greatly from area to area.

    The fundamental idea behind PFAL, that it might not be God's fault the Bible is misunderstood, is solid. However, Wierwille used the trust he built up to slip a few curveballs in. Since most of us weren't Th.D.s, whenever he backed up a few of his early claims logically, we weren't watching carefully enough to notice when he was just a bit off the plate on some things. It got to the point where some folks worshipped him so much that he could have thrown the ball into left field and these followers would still think it was a strike. (Hi, Mike.)

    When I was involved, in the mid-80s, my area was actually a wonderful place to be. People got along, they helped each other, the local leadership took good care of us--it pretty much worked like the brochures advertised. But when new leadership brought in a wave of jackbooted legalistic "Way Corps" to run things, it quickly soured. There was none of the love of Christ in the faux-expert "reproof", no wisdom in the phony-credentialed "correction". If it were the Army instead, imagine a bunch of savvy, veteran NCOs being replaced by a bunch of head-up-the-a$$, 90-day-wonder, ROTC "butterbar" 2nd Lieutenants. You know, the kind of smarmy git who would stand in front of the enlisted barracks with his shiny new bars and scream at every private who didn't immediately salute his scrawny carcass? Demanding respect instead of commanding it, that sort of thing.

    Well, those of us in our area who weren't worshipping the golden calf yet saw that what these "butterbars" were preaching was off of even what VPW had taught. So we ignored them and went up the chain of command, only to find out to our horror that all of the decent officers had been drummed out in favor of an idiot General's (Martindale) yes-men. We bailed on the ministry, but most of us didn't bail on God. It was only later that most of us found out that the corruption hadn't just started, it had just stopped being covered up as expertly.

    Still, I'm one of the ones who doesn't blame God for all the hurt done, I blame the men who abused His name for their own lusts. I'm actually thankful to God for everything I learned in The Way...especially that bit about never again taking another man's word for what God really wants me to do.

    Hope that helps clarify things a bit,

    Zixar

  5. searcher: When TWI started shedding members drastically after 1986, many of them formed up into smaller offshoot ministries. Some were near-identical TWI-clones, others branched out with new dogma.

    Some of the largest remaining offshoot ministries are Christian Educational Services (CES), founded by John Lynn, John Schoenheit, and Mark Graeser, and Christian Family Fellowship (CFF), started by Wayne Clapp and John Shroyer. Vince Finnegan started another, whose name escapes me at the moment. All were former high-ups in the TWI hierarchy at one time or another.

  6. P-Mosh: Yes, I've seen it, and it merely confirms the opinion I had formed about these people.

      , the whole bitter, two-faced lot of them.

      You surprised me, though. I hadn't exactly pegged you as a vulgarian of that magnitude.

  7. satori: Long time, no post. Good summation. You might want to mosey on over to the Political Forum and introduce yourself. I'm sure you'll find many fresh viewpoints to stimulate and challenge your debating skills.

    Well, stimulate them, anyway.

  8. Mark: You asked for an explanation. If you choose to see it as a rationalization instead, I can't stop you.

    Before you cast too many stones, though, Mark, you might want to take a look at your own track record in the Political forum. You have little room to be comparing pots and kettles.

  9. Mark: There's a differnce between offering a "differing point of view", and acting like an "obnoxious jackass". The fact that certain people choose the latter doesn't exactly make it my responsibility to smile at them and take it.

    You're directly disagreeing with me, that's fine. Nothing obnoxious about your post at all.

    On another thread, Long Gone was very critical of my past behavior, and gave several concrete examples to back it up. I disagree with some of his observations, but he wasn't being a jackass about it. He was hardly even sarcastic about it. I could pull a R-cky and try to deny it, rationalize it, or sweep it under the rug, but that would make me even more of a hypocrite than Long Gone's case currently supports.

    I really hope that boys and girls like [removed] can find a forum where they can feel free to snipe, bitch, and vent with all the four-letter words and half-witted personal slurs they can come up with. That's just never been what this place was all about, nor should it become that place.

  10. Long Gone: Point taken. However, just because I happen to agree with Penn & Teller on a lot of things, I don't consider them infallible, not by a long shot. The difference between espousing a negative opinion on one hand and being intentionally inflammatory on the other isn't all that difficult to discern.

    Now, I'm sure in your exhaustive research of every single post I've ever written, you have come across a bucketful of times where I've failed to qualify something I've said with an "I think XYZ...", or "In my opinion, ABC..." so I won't claim to be innocent on that account. But everyone has lines they won't cross, and lines they won't allow to be crossed. In the cases where I've caused unintentional offense, I've generally tried to apologize quickly. The times I've intentionally caused offense were usually in response to others' doing so first.

    Each situation has to be handled on its own qualifications, and that requires an increased level of moderation. Since Paw has taken steps to put that into place (and no, I'm FAR from immune to it) we'll just have to wait and see if it addresses the problem of offensive posts adequately enough.

  11. Steve: They do, but it takes a long time for something to fall into the public domain. 99 years or some such.

    EDIT: Ok, thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998, there will be NO copyright expirations for anything until 2018. That means that all the stuff between 1923 and 1943 that might have become public domain (like Mickey Mouse(!)) won't. The decision will have to be re-evaluated in 2018.

    Therefore, ALL of VPW's works' copyrights are still valid and in force.

  12. Even though TWI didn't produce that CD-ROM, they still own the copyrights on the material. It doesn't matter if the person doesn't charge for it, they still own the rights.

    I used to have a copy of it, but I tossed it in the shredder a couple of months ago.

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