by iknowall558 31 Replies latest jw friends
they just assume the part time gardener/cleaner/muppet with no medical qualifications can tell the doctor what to prescribe because hes read a pamphlet and watched a video released by a publishing company who misrepresents itself as an authority on medical procedures.
Pathetic, and true.
goddamn sad and tiresome, religion is...
Imagine...if aliens, smart ones, were watching us short-lives wasting what little time we have left as individuals. On the faith that the invisible, always absent 1,000's of gods & goddesses are real. And, so important that we should be willing to sacrifice our 60-80 years over whatever that particular god reqiuires.
My JW mom died refusing blood, too. Was it a sacrifice? A WT assisted suicide? Both?
I think the aleins (the smarter ones) would shake their head in sorrow at what we do in the name of religion and a lot of us humans (nowadays) are starting to do that, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice
Levant
Further information: Binding of Isaac
References in the Bible point to an awareness of human sacrifice in the history of ancient near-eastern practice. During a battle with the Israelites the king of Moab gives his firstborn son and heir as a whole burnt offering (olah, as used of the Temple sacrifice). [ 18 ] (2 Kings 3:27).
In Genesis 22 as well as the Qur'an, there is a story about Abraham's binding of Isaac, although in the Qur'an the name of the son is not mentioned and assumed to be Ismail. In the Bible's verion of the story, God tests Abraham by asking him to present his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah. No reason is given within the text. Abraham agrees to this command without arguing. The story ends with an angel stopping Abraham at the last minute and making Isaac's sacrifice unnecessary by providing a ram, caught in some nearby bushes, to be sacrificed instead. Many Bible scholars have suggested this story's origin was a remembrance of an era when human sacrifice was abolished in favor of animal sacrifice. [ 19 ] [ 20 ]
Another instance of human sacrifice mentioned in the Bible is the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter in Judges chapter 11. Jephthah vows to sacrifice to God whatsoever comes to greet him at the door when he returns home if he is victorious. The vow is stated in Judges 11:31 as "Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering." When he returns from battle, his virgin daughter runs out to greet him. According to the commentators of the rabbinic Jewish tradition , Jepthah's daughter was not sacrificed, but was forbidden to marry and remained a spinster her entire life, fulfilling the vow that she would be devoted to the Lord. [ 21 ]
Judaism
Current religious thinking views the Akedah as central to the replacement of human sacrifice; while some Talmudic scholars assert the replacement was the sacrifice of animals at the Temple - using Exodus 13,2.12f; 22,28f; 34,19f; Numeri 3,1ff; 18,15; Deuteronomy 15,19 - others view that as superseded by the symbolic pars-pro-toto sacrifice of circumcision. Leviticus 20,2 and Deuteronomy 18,10 specifically outlaw the giving of children to Moloch, making it punishable by stoning; the Tanakh subsequently denounces human sacrifice as barbaric customs of Baal worshippers (e.g. Psalms 106,37ff).
Judges chapter 11 contains a story in which a Judge named Jephthah makes a vow to God to sacrifice the first thing that comes out of the door of his house in exchange for God's help with a military battle against the Ammonites. Much to his dismay, his only daughter greeted him upon his triumphant return. Judges 11:39 states that Jephthah kept his vow.
The 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus understood this to mean that Jephthah burned his daughter on Yahweh’s altar, whilst pseudo-Philo, late first-century C.E., wrote that Jephthah offered his daughter as a burnt offering because he could find no sage in Israel who would cancel his vow. According to Jewish tradition Jephthah was punished along with the high priest Phinehas, who could have annulled Jephthah’s vow but refused. A modern commentator, Solomon Landers, believes that a plausible alternative is that Jephthah’s vow was most likely modified and that she was not in fact sacrificed, but rather, her fate may have been perpetual virginity or solitary confinement. [ 9 ] This is seen by others to be contradicted by scripture which says: "That from year to year the daughters of Israel assemble together, and lament the daughter of Jephte, the Galaadite, for four days"(Judges xi,40) on the basis that people do not mourn for the living. [ 67 ]
In the Christian religion the belief developed that the story of Isaac's binding and of Jepthah's virgin daughter were foreshadowing for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and whose sacrifice and resurrection allowed the sins of mankind to be washed away. There is a tradition that the site of the binding of Isaac, Moriah, was also the city of Jesus's future crucifixion. [ 68 ]
The beliefs of most denominations of Christianity hinge upon a single, specific human sacrifice: that of Christ. Christians believe that in order to gain access to paradise in the afterlife each individual person must somehow become a partaker in that all-important human sacrifice for the atonement of their personal sins. Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians believe that they participate in the sacrifice of Calvary through the Eucharist, which they believe is really the body and blood of Jesus Christ that they eat and drink. [ 69 ] [ 70 ] Many Protestants, however, reject this, and believe rather that the bread and wine of communion are merely symbolic. Although early Christians in the Roman Empire were accused of being cannibals, [ 71 ] practices such as human sacrifice were abhorrent to them. [ 72 ]
The Qur'an strongly condemns human sacrifice, as a "grave error and sinful act" [ 73 ] and an "ignorant, foolish act of those that have gone astray" [ 74 ] , and speaks of how the "pagans were deluded by their deities to kill their own children" [ 74 ] .
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Preparing to burn a witch in 1544. Witch-hunts are an example of mass behavior fueled by moral panic. 
SenatorJoseph McCarthy stoked a moral panic in the United States about Communist infiltration into American life
A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. [ 1 ] According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." [ 2 ] Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as "moral entrepreneurs", while people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as "folk devils." Moral panics are in essence controversies that involve arguments and social tension and in which disagreement is difficult because the matter at its center is taboo. [ 3 ] The media have long operated as agents of moral indignation, even when they are not self-consciously engaged in crusading or muckraking. Simply reporting the facts can be enough to generate concern, anxiety or panic. [ 4 ]
