DJEggnog has posted a lot, and some of that was to respond to questions raised by me. Here are my replies.
It is always said that YHWH will punish or reward you on the basis of what you do. Apparently he would also punish or reward you on the basis of what someone else would do in your name.
No. I didn't follow your logic here either.
It should be easy to follow the logic. A two-year old cannot possibly make a decision about a transfusion, neither against it, neither in favor of it. How should she be accountable before Jehovah for a transfusion?
How would it have value before any God if someone else refused a translation on your behalf, and you died for it?
I wonder how it is that Jehovah's witnesses don't consider this murder.
Why would this be murder? Murder is when you kill someone with malice aforethought. It's not reasonable to think that a parent -- any loving parent -- would want to maliciously kill their own child.
You have a very particular definition of murder. In your opinion, it's not murder if there's no malice. That is simply not true. If I am drunk, shoot my gun, and someone happens to take the bullet, that is murder all the same. If I find my wife with another man and shoot the two bastards because my pain blinds me (and enrages me), that is murder even if there was no "aforethought" to the matter. Common sense and the law have long recognized that it is not "intention" that matters, but "result". If we were to believe that murder isn't murder if there is no malice aforethought, then every criminal would claim not to have acted "maliciously" and that would be the end of the matter. No murder.
In the same line of thought, it doesn't matter whether parents think they are protecting their children by refusing a translation. The children die all the same, and they die as a result of a decision of the parents NOT to give them blood.
It's not a matter of whether it's "reasonable" to think that "a loving parent" would want to kill a child. This is a red herring. It's a matter of whether the child dies as a result of what the parent decides.
DGP, the impossibility of a minor to make a choice like this is the very reason why the government/courts will intervene here in Canada on behalf of minors. If adults want to risk their lives to follow their beliefs, fine...but they cannot make that choice for minors.
If what you say is true, that's too bad for Canadians, for when it comes to one's choice of religion or in what religion a child will be raised, such decisions have in the past been sacrosanct here in the US, but maybe what you are saying here is not true and children do have freedom of choice in Canada as they do here in the US.
Some time ago I learned a trick that people use. It's called "responding to a question, but not answering it". This trick is often used by politicians that people take for fools. You ask them a question about, say, taxes, and they "take advantage of that opportunity" to speak about something else. They are aware that they evaded the question, but their real intent is to talk about matters that matter (forgive me for the repetition) only to them. I feel you, Eggnog, are doing this here. "The impossibility of a minor to make a choice" JGNat was talking about is clearly not about "choice of religion". It is clearly about "choice of transfusion". A two-year old is not aware of what a transfusion is, or what it entails in terms of religion. Therefore, she wouldn't be "choosing" a transfusion. Her parents would, on the basis of their own beliefs, not the child's. No one would allow the parents of a 20 year old, say, to choose for him. Why should it be different if the question were a life and death issue, and the person who would be dying were not capable of understanding the extent of refusing a transfusion? JGNat was very clear. "If adults want to risk their lives to follow their beliefs, fine... but they cannot make that choice for minors".
Incidentally, and not because I want to evade the point, but because you opened the door, CHILDREN ARE NOT FREE TO CHOOSE THEIR RELIGION. I chose to write in capitals because it's an internet convention that this means SCREAMING. I was born to an atheist father and a Catholic mother and "naturally", my mother chose to rear me as a Catholic. I have Baptist friends whose parents were Baptists and, "naturally", they were Baptists, too. It should be unnecessary to point out that children are reared by parents in the parents' religions, and the feelings of the children are disregarded. Parents may be thinking that they are doing the right thing, but that should not prevent anyone from accepting the obvious fact that children aren't given the chance not to be reared in the religion of their parents.
I said I didn't want to evade your point, and I am not evading it. With the previous paragraph, my point is that the children of Jehovah's witnesses aren't allowed the choice NOT to be Jehovah's witnesses. You will say that they are not baptized at birth, like my mother did with me, for example, but that does not mean children can choose. They can't choose not to go to the Kingdom Hall. I've read countless stories about children who weren't even allowed to be distracted while at the Kingdom Hall, and who were beaten simply because, NATURALLY, they couldn't sit tight. A two-year old haemophiliac child of two Jehovah's witnesses wouldn't be given the choice not to be reared as a Jehovah's witness, and you know it.
By the way, I mentioned my own Catholic baptism with full intent. My father is a strong atheist and he didn't want his son to be baptized. My mother baptized me one day he wasn't home, and she reared me as a devout Catholic in spite of my father's disagreement. So much for choice, eh?
Let me play Devil's Advocate here. You consider the Catholic Church to be a Harlot. So, I wasn't reared in "the Truth". In your own terms, was I given the choice to be reared in the true religion, or did my mother choose for me? Was my mother's decision any different from the decision of so many other parents?
I'll come back with more.
