Back to the same forum, this guy is incredible!
This is pasted from many posts further on, still dealing with the blood issue:
29. "RE: For Crosby, BLOOD"In response to message #28
| | LAST EDITED ON 06-20-02 AT 00:20 AM (EDT)
Hello Wrench, Thank you for your time and patience. I really do appreciate it. Back when we started down this fork in the thread and you presented your thoughts by asking me, "would it not follow" I honestly thought that you had in mind the established convention of a conclusion following from a premise. Although I wasn't necessarily looking for a classical Aristotelian three-point syllogism, since few people express themselves in those terms in casual conversation, I was looking for some sort of logical formula. So that there is no doubt of what I'm talking about, let me illustrate with a simple example: A. The Bible forbids the eating of blood B. Transfusion is equivalent to eating blood Quod erat demonstrandum --- The Bible forbids transfusion.
While we can agree on proposition A, I believe proposition B cannot simply be assumed and requires proof. Transfusion is equivalent to eating blood because |
______________
In my response on the 6th of this month, I seem to have "gone off the reservation" so to speak in treating your reference to "sustaining life" as a supporting element of whatever your own equivalent of the second proposition happens to be. I apologize for this and appreciate the clarification. However, I do believe that most of the points are still relevant.
I've gone through what you have written carefully, and just don't see anything that would fill in this blank above as proof. What I do see are a goodly number of instances where equivalency is implied through devices that are commonly considered to be logical fallacies.
For example, you made the following two statements:
"It was not to be taken into the body, EVEN IF IT MEANT sustaining life, according to the Law." "I do not see how it would be feasible to merely change the means of introducing blood into your system to make it suddenly acceptable to do so, EVEN IF IT MEANT saving your life.
The human body is composed not of one system but many. There is a huge difference for example, between taking water into your digestive system (your stomach) and taking water into your respiratory system. (your lungs) While the use of terms like introducing water into your system or "taking water into the body" could be used to describe either drinking or drowning, they are not equivalent acts in anything other than a superficial similarity. In a logical construction, you never use a generic term where a specific term will do. Grouping together or otherwise implying equivalency between two acts through the use of terms sufficiently generic to apply to both is equivocation.
Similarly the difference between taking blood into your digestive system versus taking blood into your circulatory system is not a minor technicality that can be dismissed out of hand as irrelevant. It is the same difference between receiving a human kidney via transplant versus sitting down at the table and eating that kidney for dinner. You may not be willing to recognize the physical and moral distinctions between tissue transplant and cannibalism yourself, but I know that many of your fellow church members do.
You said:
"He was objecting to the illegitimate use of blood. It had one use. It was poured out for forgiveness of sin. After that, it was to be discarded. No other use, not even in the event of death."
Although I'm not positive as to the basis for this statement, unless possibly it was the instructions given to Israel regarding the butchering of a wild animal for food, this is the exact same sort of generalization that will quickly get the claimant painted into a corner in this discussion. Remember that in discussing the consumption of blood versus the transfusion of blood, we are considering the use of blood as food versus the use of blood as blood
When blood ferries oxygen and diffusible solutes to the tissues and carbon dioxide, urea and other waste products, from the tissues, when it binds toxins, maintains hemostasis, regulates oncotic pressure or any of a myriad other functions, what are these if not "uses" of blood? On what basis could the performance of these functions be labeled a "use" with reference to transfused blood but not a "use" with reference to our own blood?
You said:
"EVEN IF IT MEANT YOUR LIFE, blood was not to be eaten. There were no special clauses that allowed the eating of blood if it meant your life."
The basis for this and the many similar statements peppered throughout your reply appears to be nothing more than the "argument from silence." This is not always a logical fallacy, but neither is it a viable argument until alternative explanations for the silence have been eliminated. Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence, so the dictum goes.
It's true that insofar as exceptions to the prohibition against eating blood are concerned, the Bible is completely silent. But in truth, what need would there have been to explain such a concept at a time and place where it would never have occurred?
Again, if a life or death situation with blood as the determinate factor could have arisen at any point in the biblical era, I am unaware of it. At a time before blood could be preserved apart from the body for more than a few hours, the availability of an animal that had either recently been slaughtered, or could be slaughtered if the need arose is a prerequisite for blood to be available at all. Unless one wants to make the claim that the extra few minutes involved in bleeding a carcass would make the difference between life and death (Re: 1 Samuel 14:32) then the idea that blood could ever have been anything more than one among many general contributory factors in the sustenance of life is in my opinion contrived out of thin air.
I'm not trying sound lecturing here with these three examples, it's just that this is exactly what I had in mind when I said that the lack of an explicit biblical condemnation of transfusion raises the bar considerably in terms of how the doctrine may be established and taught. It's very easy to mistake our own gut-feelings on the topic as proof. I don't mean by this that JW's are necessarily "right" or "wrong" in their viewpoint, it simply seems to me that any Christian, JW or otherwise using only the NWT and sound principles of grammar and logic could well arrive at a different conclusion.
You asked:
I think I find you subscribing to the idea that THIS current life is the MOST important thing. May I ask you? Do you believe that we should preserve this current life AT ALL COST?
No I don't, but neither do I believe that hopes of a future life in any way diminish our own culpability for evitable death in this life.
Where would you draw the line?
I would allow that a direct command from God trumps all other considerations. As I have attempted to explain several times now, both to you and to Twater, my reservation when it comes to the medical use of blood is whether it can truthfully be said that we have such a command.
Although I'm not a big fan of the "I said - you said - I said" type of dialogue, I think one item requires it:
Although I agree with you that human blood is sacred, I don't think it necessarily follows that human blood should be treated exactly as animal blood. Here again, this link appears to me to be more perceived on your part than real as I don't believe that God ever equated the value of human life with that of animal life or for that matter, ever gave any instruction as to the proper use and handling of human blood.The Law stated ANY sort of blood of ANY kind of flesh. That would include human blood, would it not?
In regard to the consumption of blood---Yes. However I don't believe there are any instructions in the Law either perceived or real that can be construed to apply to the handling of human blood.
If the Law considered animal blood to be THAT sacred, would it not be even more sacred in regard to human blood?
Probably, but that was exactly my point. I'm not sure how treating human blood no differently than we treat the blood of pigs in a slaughterhouse would show greater respect either for the blood as a substance or the life it represents.
In regard to TTTS:
And of course this scenario is a direct result of the imperfection of man, not something that God intended to happen.
TTTS is relatively rare. However the exchange of blood in multiple births with a common placenta is not. It is the rule, not the exception.
I have no way of knowing the details of such a thing but I would guess that the blood was fair game to any of the original possessors of that blood. It would be usable in any one or all of them since they all possessed it from birth. Who could decide what belonged to whom? I think you would be wrong about how we would handle such a thing but I am not being dogmatic either. I am neither a doctor or a scientist.
You are quite probably more familiar with JW policy than I am, but it is my understanding that it explicitly condemns autologous as well as allogenic transfusion.
On Blood under the Law:
Was blood poured on the ground in the Law covenant?
I'm assuming you have in mind the instructions to Israelite hunters and farmers living in remote areas directing that the blood of a slain animal was to be drained out upon the ground. (Re: Leviticus 17:13; & Deuteronomy 12:15,16;22-24)
Did that fact deny its sacredness? What do you suppose God was thinking when he made such commands? I ask because I see a direct parallel.
If you want speculation, I'll offer it, but I want to be clear that I don't presume to know what God was thinking when he made such commands. The impropriety of acting on what we suppose that God's intent in framing the law might have been, especially when there are other, clearer laws involved, has been my principal objection from the beginning.
Throughout the biblical era, the standard method for putting farm animals to death was for one to seize it by the ears or horns while another quickly slit its throat with a very sharp knife. With wild animals like birds, the stag, and gazelle the situation is somewhat different because they do not as a rule, let you walk up to them and slit their throats. Wild creatures were put to death at a distance either with an arrow, a spear, a snare or some other way that would not sufficiently bleed them.
The necessary first step in butchering the carcass would naturally be to make sure it was properly bled. Removing the blood of a slain animal by letting gravity drain it out upon the ground while the carcass is still warm was and still is the quickest most practical solution to the problem involved with eating animal flesh while still making an honest effort to avoid eating the blood. As the verses in question indicate, the blood of a slaughtered animal was to be removed so it would not be eaten and therefore the directive appears to be primarily utilitarian in nature.
Best regards,
--Crosby
