To Dunsscot:
:: Abraham's actions were nothing of the kind. Since for true believers, whatever God says is ethical, is ethical, Abraham made no suspension of his ethics -- he changed his ethics due to God's command, just as surely as worshipers of Jehovah changed their ethics when they went from being under Jewish Law to being under Christian principles.:
: I will your address your voluntarist understanding of God as we progress.
Readers will see that you do not.
: For now I'll just say that I think there is a sense in which Abraham did indeed suspend the ethical to obey God. True, he did not violate any ethical laws to fulfill the divine directive concerning His Son. But my point is that Abraham suspended what seemed ethical for a higher telos.
He didn't merely suspend it -- he substituted another for it. I pointed this out but you never address it.
: Certain scholars have pointed out that Kierkegaard meant Abraham performed what seemed to be an antisocial gesture in order to fulfill a religious commitment. Kierkegaard explicitly writes that Abraham showed himself willing to offer up Isaac for God and himself.
I wish you'd quit prattling on about Kierkegaard and such wordly philosophers. Just state what you believe and why.
: The command to offer up Isaac was not necessarily unethical. But if God would have allowed Abraham to go through with slaughtering His Son, that act could have been construed--indeed, may have been!--unjust.
Why would it have been unjust? Isn't it true that JWs believe that the Bible teaches that the God-Abraham-Isaac story is an illustration and forerunner of what God actually did with his own Son? If the larger reality was just, then how could the smaller illustration of it -- even though uncompleted -- be unjust?
::: and a modern JWs refusal to take blood. I even stated that I think blood tranfusions should be a matter of conscience, period.
:: You are to be commended for this stand. It could get you DA'd, you know.
: That's a consequence one has to live with for now. What happened to those persons who dared to defy wicked King Zedekiah or King Joash? I think you well know the answer to this question.
Of course, and so I think you understand my point: the Governing Body is no different from those wicked kings, in that they all demand obededience to their persons over obedience to God, and punish those who obey God first.
But there is a big difference in the situations. According to the Bible, the Israelite nation was a special possession of God, not because of anything they themselves did, but because of God's ancient promise to Abraham. Indeed, if God was to fulfill his promise, he had no choice but to put up with a certain amount of Jewish misbehavior. On the other hand, JW leaders claim to be in their positions not because of a promise made to one of their ancestors, but because JW (more properly, Bible Student) leaders from roughly 1880 to 1919 were so superior in every important way to other Christians that God selected them as his special earthly spokesmen. Indeed, they claim that in 1919 God appointed them "over all Christ's belongings". Thus, a wicked Israelite king could have done nothing to negate his claim that his nation was God's special possession, but wicked JW leaders prove by their wicked actions that their claim of special appointment as God's spokesmen, as being heads over "God's people", as having special direction from God, and many other claims, are false. Indeed, since such leaders have over time completely determined the nature of the JW religion, their wicked actions prove that JWs are not "God's special people" at all, since JWs for the most part have voluntarily gone along with and given physical support to such actions.
::: And to answer Jerry's question, if a Witness examines Scripture (thus listening to qol YHWH) and thinks that he or she can in all good conscience take blood or allow his or her child to have blood, then by all means, they should listen to their internal witness-bearer and the voice of YHWH.
:: Good! Why then, do you follow and give verbal support to men who declare wicked those who do exactly as you suggest? Here is an example of wicked men declaring the righteous one wicked.
: You want to construe life in terms of strict binary oppositions.
Not at all. But in this situation the issue is a life and death matter, and is so clear that it most certainly is a binary proposition: the position of the GB is right, or it is wrong. Either taking a blood transfusion violates God's law, or it does not. There is no in-between.
: Wicked men declare the righteous wicked,
This is not a proposition that I have set up -- it is one that your precious Bible has set up: "anyone pronouncing the righteous one wicked [is] ... something detestable to Jehovah." (Proverbs 17:15) Someone "detestable to Jehovah" is by definition wicked. Thus, my statement is strictly Bible-based.
: while righteous men do no such thing.
A righteous man who declares the righteous wicked immediate becomes wicked -- according to the Bible. You don't like it? Argue with the Bible, not me.
: Life is not quite that way. Just as a righteous person can borrow money and not pay it back or lie and deceive, he or she is also capable of declaring the righteous one wicked.
We're not talking about capabilities. We're talking about accomplished acts. We're talking about how the Bible states God views someone who has declared the righteous one wicked.
: Even if wicked men have declared the righteous one wicked, God will see to that!
When? Before the wicked men do irreparable damage to people and to family relations? And please don't resort to that tired old saw about God fixing everything in the resurrection. If that notion had any validity, laws against murder and all other crimes would be meaningless.
: This fact does not mean that I should reject the WTS.
According to the Bible it does. If you willingly go along with men that the Bible explicitly states are wicked, you share in their sins. If you disagree, then prove to me from the Bible that I'm wrong.
: It also does not mean that I should become a law unto my own self and insist that the GB see things my way.
No one is asking you to do that. I am attempting to prick your conscience to get you to see that supporting wrondoing makes you responsible for it. You don't make yourself a law unto yourself simply by disagreeing with the opinions of fallible men. Such men have told you so, but they're just as wrong in this as they are in DF'ing or DA'ing people for disagreeing with them about blood. Nor do you have to insist that the GB see anything your way. Better men than you have tried and failed. You can vote with your feet. And if you have any notions of changing the ideas of JW leaders, experience proves that only masses of JWs voting with their feet will do that. If you don't vote with your feet, nothing will happen.
::: But while Abraham's case is not identical with that of modern JWs, I think his case is analogous in a Thomistic sense.
:: Try using words that make sense to us simple folk.
: You could not resist, could you? Well, AlanF, you're much smarter than Dunsscot. I mean that in all insincerity. <G>
Well that's an interesting response. I don't know you well enough to know what you're actually saying here.
My point is the same as from the beginning of this thread: if you want to be heard, don't use words and allusions that few understand, or that your readers have to work hard to understand.
:::: If Jehovah is the Supreme Creator who determines right and wrong, what is ethical and what is not, then by definition what he tells someone to do is right and ethical. Therefore, if Abraham had killed Isaac by God's command, it would have been ethical by definition.:
::: If a voluntarist delineation of God's nature is correct, THEN whatever Jehovah commands is right or wrong. But I'm not so sure the voluntarist is right when he or she contends that the voluntas of God takes precedence over the intellectus dei. Michael Gillespie's _Nihilism Before Nietzsche_ highlights the difficulties with positing a God who is omnipotent in a strict sense. The difficulties involved here can also be observed in Plato's "Euthyphro."
:: This is a large question, true, but it is irrelevant to the teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses, which after all is what you're on this board supporting. For JWs, your words are meaningless. If a standard of morality exists apart from God, then God did not make it. If such exists, then God of necessity must be obeying someone else -- whoever created that standard. But according to JWs, God is omnipotent and answers to no one else. That's pretty much what the Bible says, too.
: I don't think I typed that a "standard of morality exists apart from God."
So what? It follows inevitably from the proposition that God has a choice between following and not following some moral standard that was not determined by God himself. This is elementary and I don't see why I have to explain it to you.
We have a simple truth: either God created the full moral fabric under which the sentient beings in our purvue operate, or he did not. If you admit he did, then you admit that what you call "voluntarism" is true. If not, then someone other than God created it. Who would that be? Or did this moral fabric arise of itself from a primordial moral soup? Plenty of other hard questions follow.
: Of course, Plato's dialogue in the "Euthyphro" might suggest that I am grabbing that horn of the dilemma, but I am not.
???
: William Lane Craig argues that God is necessarily good. Therefore, He can only enact righteous decrees.
I don't give a rat's ass about William Lane Craig, but if as the Bible says, "God is good" is true in an absolute sense, then whatever decrees God enacts are necessarily and by definition righteous. But that is not the point here. The point is whether those decrees are righteous by some standard apart from God, or are righteous because God decreed them.
Let me put it another way: Which came first? God, or the moral standards?
: The only thing that I do not like about Lane's approach is his seeming contention that God has no choice when it comes to enacting righteous or unrighteous decrees. I personally think that God freely chooses that which is just, pious or holy on the basis of His just character and the primal ethical (love). That is, love is the divine primal attribute that governs the divine will and intellect.
I think what you're saying is that an absolute standard of morality exists apart from God, but that God always freely chooses to act in accord with that standard. Thus, you're saying that God is not free to change that standard of morality. Of course, you could say that God in his infinite wisdom planned long in advance that he was going to make such changes somewhere along the way, and thus that there was no real change in morality. But that's pretty well self-defeating, as a little thought will show you.
Nevertheless, under the Law it was immoral for Jews to violate the Sabbath; Christians do not hearken to that morality. And it was moral for Jewish men to marry any number of women and to screw around with any number of concubines. According to God, it was moral. Your arguments don't change that and you've completely sidestepped this problem.
:: When Abraham argued God down to allowing that if only ten righteous men could be found in Sodom and Gomorrah, he asked, "Is the Judge of all the earth not going to do what is right?" Obviously in this instance, he held God to a higher standard than "whatever God told him". Yet we're quite certain that if God had told Abraham, "Listen you little snipe! It's not your business to question me! Do what you're told or you're toast!" Abraham would have meekly obeyed and likely convinced himself that God was acting properly after all.
: Abraham might have obeyed, but I don't think that we would have a good reason to obey in similar circumstances.
What? You're telling me that sometimes it's proper to disobey God? By what moral standard?
: For instance, we now know that God does not desire human sacrifices. So if anyone told us that God wanted us to kill out child as a SACRIFICE, we would rightly repudiate such a request.
Totally false. God could easily change his standards. He has done so before and he may well do it again.
More important to you as a claimed worshiper of God, if you knew that it was God himself who told you to do such a thing, would you obey God and show complete faith in him like Abraham did? Or would you prove faithless and do according to your own will?
Besides, who are you to become a law unto yourself and determine what God ought to do? You express chagrin at the thought of contradicting the Governing Body, but have no problem with the thought of contradicting God. Doesn't that prove that you, like most other JWs, put the mouthings of JW leaders above the commands of God?
::: This fact does not mean that an action is right because God commands it. Duns Scotus thought that if God commanded us to commit adultery, then marital infidelity would be permissible. I disagree in toto, pace Duns. If we favor such an interpretation of the divine potentia, we open up Pandora's box, and allow nihilism to run rampant.
:: So what? That's the way it is. Old Duns was right. God, being the creator, can declare any actions he pleases to be right. That he does so is demonstrable from Bible stories. It was just fine for patriarchs -- and certainly kings -- to have as many wives and concubines as they could handle. Such practices were regulated, but that does not negate the fact that, as implied by Jesus, God changed his standards for marital fidelity sometime between Adam and Abraham. The original was supposedly one man, one woman, period. The faithful among the patriarchs held strictly to the standards God set for them -- including screwing their wives' servants when their wives allowed it -- and so, if later Bible writers held these men up as paragons of morality, then they were righteous -- by definition!
: I've already shown why one need not accept the voluntarist construal of matters.
No you haven't. You've merely alluded to the writings of a few worldly philosophers. I've shown why what you actually appear to be saying contradicts the Bible and common sense.
: I might also point to Ps 89:14, which indicates God cannot do that which is unjust since His very throne is based on justice and righteousness. This verse would seem meaningless if the signifier "justice" did not point to a certain material value.
This is entirely irrelevant to my point.
: Concerning polygamy: Jesus did not say that God changed His standard to accomodate the patriarchs and Israel. He declared that Moses "suffered you to put away your wives : but from the beginning it was not so."
You're talking about divorce, but I said nothing about divorce. Nor does polygamy have anything to do with divorce or with Jesus' words about divorce. That is why I specifically stated that my point was implied by Jesus. Obviously I have to explain this to you: Jesus stated: "Did you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh'? So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has yoked together let no man put apart." (Matthew 19:4-6) Obviously God's standard from the beginning was for one man and one woman to be married. Obviously by patriarchal times (only a couple of hundred years from the Flood at most by the Watchtower timetable) that standard had given way, with God's approval, to one man and many women. How and when that happened is irrelevant to my point, which is that God had one standard for mankind in Adam and Eve's day, and another in patriarchal times. Since that change occurred before Israel existed, Jesus' words about divorce and the Law are irrelevant.
:: Conversely, if God declared that from now on marriage was a dead institution (new scrolls opened and all that), and men and women should be like bonobos and free have sex with whoever they pleased, what humans could properly tell him that he had set up an improper standard? You? Me? Not likely. JW leaders and other Pharisees? More than likely.
: First, your example is purely speculative thought that is far removed from reality.
Not at all removed from reality. God obviously went from one standard at Adam's creation to another standard by patriarchal times and back to the old standard in Jesus' day. If the standard went to 'one man, many women', why not to 'many men, many women'?
: Secondly, if values are in fact material, then premarital sex is wrong, period.
What? Premarital sex was not said to be wrong until Jesus' day, according to everything we read in the Bible. What was wrong in patriarchal times and for the Israelites was not premarital sex in and of itself, but extra-marital sex when a man's property rights were violated. The Old Testament standards about adultery and extra-marital sex were entirely about the property rights of men, not about sexual propriety.
The story about Judah and Tamar is a good proof of my point. Judah was married and was obviously accustomed to fooling around with prostitutes and the Bible does not condemn him for it. Indeed, the account relates that God himself killed two of Judah's sons for the 'crime' of failing to fulfill brother-in-law marriage, so if God thought that Judah's actions were really bad, he would have killed him too. That Judah was so accustomed is implied by the story: Tamar knew enough about Judah's habits to know that if she disguised herself as a temple prostitute and made herself available on the road, Judah would take the bait. It would be stretching credulity to claim that Tamar would try such a thing unless she knew it had a good chance of working. Also, Judah's Adullamite companion happily cooperated with Judah in trying to pay for his dalliance. Furthermore, the story does not condemn Tamar for having extra-marital relations. Indeed, Judah admits that she was justified in her conduct, because of the far more important "moral principle" of brother-in-law marriage.
What's the deal with that? By Christian standards, the divinely-approved practice of brother-in-law marriage amounts to adultery. It's another illustration of God's radically changed moral standards, in that at one time God held that the right of a man to leave offspring bearing his name was more important than future Christian sexual standards.
And what about the righteous Samson? He visited and obviously dallied with Philistine prostitutes and yet remained highly approved by God. In this case property rights were not being violated because Samson was not married and neither were the prostitutes.
A careful analysis of the rest of the OT and of the Mosaic Law shows that almost all of the laws about extra-marital sex had to do either with property rights, or avoiding incest. They have nothing to do with the Christian standard of sexual morality.
: Furthermore, I think the Roman Catholics have a valid point when they talk about human "nature." God evidently made our bodies to function in a certain manner. If we try to use our bodies in an unnatural way (not in accord with their nature), we could have major problems. At present, the preponderance of evidence indicates that it is unnatural to be promiscuous or have sex outside of marriage. Why would God command that which would causes humans problems because it is unnatural for them?
What evidence shows that such is unnatural? If it were unnatural, then how do you explain the success of the patriarchal system, one that was largely based on polygamy? If it were so bad, then why did God approve of it?
::: JWs do not have a death wish for their children. They do everything in their power to give their children, happy and content lives. Furthermore, the JW life by its very nature is life-promoting.
:: Irrelevant. Exactly the same can be said of many Christian groups that practice a small number of hurtful or deadly things. You will no doubt disagree with them, yet not quite be able to see why you should apply your standard of disagreement to your own religion. Why is that? Simple: to admit it would be to admit that your religion is no better than so many others, and that would kill off your incentive to stick with it, which is emotionally unacceptable.
:: For example, do you think that the crazy Christian Pentecostal snake-handlers of Tennessee love their children any less than JWs do, or do less than everything in their power to give fine lives to their children? Not likely. But these people, who give their children poison to drink and make them handle poisonous snakes -- sometimes resulting in death -- you'll certainly condemn them for going against common sense. At least, I hope you would. Does the "life-promoting" conduct of such people in most areas negate their death-promoting behavior with respect to snake-handling? Clearly not. These people are nuts, and they prove that they really don't respect life even though they claim that they love life and are only showing faith in God by putting themselves unnecessarily in harm's way. And just like with the JWs and their blood doctrine, the mere claim that the snake-handling doctrine is "biblical" does not make it so, and does not negate the gross disrespect for life that all these people show.
: I do not think the two situations are analogous.
Obviously no two situations are completely analagous. They only have to be sufficiently so to illustrate a point.
: True, one could argue that snake-handlers carry out their activities on the basis of a questionable biblical text, and go on to point out that JWs base their decisions concerning blood transfusion on an equally questionable Bible principle.
That is the point.
: But JWs do not intentionally put their children in jeopardy by walking into a den of snakes and handling such serpents around their children. Some event has to occur before the issue of blood transfusions even comes up in the life of a JW. The JW then makes a decision based on certain factors.
So what? The Society has arranged things so that JWs make an advance decision not to have certain forms of blood transfusion no matter what. If a bad situation never arises, they've beaten the odds. But if they find themselves in a life-threatening situation where blood is the only alternative, then they have just as surely put themselves in harm's way as have the snake handlers.
This point bears repeating: Jehovah's Witnesses and certain other Christian groups intentionally put themselves in harm's way based on nothing more than an extremely questionable interpretation of the Bible.
: What is more, refusing to take a blood transfusion is not necessarily death-dealing. It may be life-giving. I cannot say that for a snake bite.
So what? We're not talking about medical situations where blood is considered an option. We're talking about situations where the majority medical opinion is that the patient will die quickly without blood. Situations like when a person's blood is gushing out onto the ground after a bad auto accident and it falls below the critical level. A snake bite is not necessarily fatal either, but does that in any way justify putting children in harm's way?
Actually, your response here shows your inability to see your religion's double standards at work. You see the flaw in other religions but are unable to see the same flaw in your own. Do you understand why that is?
::: Lastly, I find it ironic that those who worry so much about the POTENTIAL death of a child who refuses blood transfusions do not care enough about the spiritual welfare of their children to teach them spiritual and ethtical guidelines. Some parents even smoke in front of their children or abuse alcohol. They also fail to teach them biblical truth or transcendent values as a whole. Are they any better than Witnesses who MAY permit their children to die if suitable alternatives to blood cannot be found?
:: Who are you to judge what is right for others to teach their children? Can you prove apodictically that God exists, that this God is the God of the Bible, and so on? No? Then don't judge those who act responsibly on that knowledge.
: While I cannot irrefutably"prove" that God exists, no one can "prove" (apodictically) that He does not exist.
Precisely. So arguing that either belief ought to be the basis for some absolute moral standard is unjustifiable. Your beliefs amount to exactly that -- beliefs and opinions.
: But, as Plantinga has shown, belief in God could be viewed as basic.
And Feuerbacher has shown that unbelief in God could be viewed as basic.
So what?
: There could be as much evidence for belief in God as there is for belief in other minds.
"Could be's" are a dime a dozen.
: Since you like to quote Scripture, you might enjoy reviewing Hebrews 3:4.
Ah, very good. All sentient beings are constructs. Who then, constructed God?
:: More important for our present discussion, though, is that you're raising another red herring. The propriety of the JW position on blood has nothing to do with the living habits of anyone -- including those who choose to discuss the issue.
: I think one's living habits have a lot to do with the issue of blood transfusions.
That position is nonsensical. It is easy to disprove by exhaustive process of elimination:
Does the propriety of the JW position on blood have anything to do with the living habits of Sadaam Hussein? No.
Does it have anything to do with the living habits of George Bush? No.
...
Repeat six billion times for everyone in the world and get a No answer.
...
End repetition.
Since the living habits of no single person have anything to do with the propriety of the JW position on blood, it follows that the propriety of the JW position on blood has nothing to do with the living habits of anyone -- including those who choose to discuss the issue. QED
Clearly, my personal habits have nothing to do with the Society's position on blood. Nor do yours, nor those of anyone else on this forum.
:: As the apostle Paul was asked, dunsscott, why do you keep kicking against the goads? The answer to "the question of blood and JWs" is obvious and you know it. Why not act on your gut, follow through, and do the right thing?
: I may see things your way one day, AlanF. But remember what James 1:19 says: "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath."
That's a good rule to live by. It took me seventeen years from the point where I first realized that the Society is fallible to get to the point of acting on it and ceasing to preach the JW version of the gospel. It took another ten to realize that the Society's leaders are irredeemable and thoroughly unchristian. It took another five to admit that I had been completely taken in by a cult. But I didn't have the advantages you do, such as the Internet and a large community of people who had already 'been there'. When you finally see the light, you'll be surprised at what else you find. Many have found for the first time in their lives that they have friends they know they can count on, friends who won't abandon them at the first sign of disagreement with some silly religious view. Do your JW companions allow others that freedom? Not likely. Most JWs simply don't know what real freedom and friendship are. Their view of them is like that of a man in a desert who has heard that green pastures exist over the next hill, but who never quite manages to get over that hill.
AlanF
