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stevenyc

LittleToe,

Oh sweet bliss, for you are a lucky soul!

steve.

LittleToe

No its not God's will that the child dies, just as it wasnt Gods will that 50 million people died in WWII, and so on.

Personally I wouldn't have equated the two incidents, but seeing as you have, I believe they are fair game:
Are you likening the consequences of a deranged madman (Hitler) to the consequences of a small mean-minded sect led by a few semi-senile octogenarians?

The questions I was actually refering to were the personal ones, like how long you've been studying, how many of the religions you quoted you've actually studied with (rather than merely about, and potentially using WTS literature), etc., etc..

Paint me blue and call me Randy, but I honestly fail to see how you can have come to the conclusions you have, given the details you've given about your "investigation".

Steve:I am

hamsterbait

"Russel was wrong"?

He founded that organisation. If you can see He was wrong why can't you recognise what came after as revisionism to keep the thing going and money coming in to pay for Rutherford's whisky?

I spent three years studying philosophy.

No diligent student of philosophy would defend such evidently specious teachings so badly. Or accept them so readily.

Go confess to your elders, maybe they won't DA or DF you - I assume even a philosopher knows what that means to a JW?

And if you do get baptised wave your unbaptised girlfriend bye bye. Or they'll mark you also.

My Verdict: TROLL

confusedjw

Delta - I don't know if anyone pointed you to this but visit www.607v587.com

JW's can't be the "true religion" if they weren't chosen by God correct?

Visit the site

Country_Woman

Outlawed-Robert & Jaron

Nice to see both of you here.

Branda

stevenyc

and Im studying Philosophy at the moment, and I just completed my class Argumentation and we learned about Ad Hominems and other stuff there so I thought it would be fun to put it to practise.

so you are trolling then?

steve.

Valis

Well, Russell was wrong,

*LOL* Dude...you just dissed the big daddy of analytic philosohpy...*LOL*

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

Bertrand Russell

Delta20

Personally I wouldn't have equated the two incidents, but seeing as you have, I believe they are fair game:
Are you likening the consequences of a deranged madman (Hitler) to the consequences of a small mean-minded sect led by a few semi-senile octogenarians?

I simply stated what imo (and from what I get from the bible) God's will is because that was your question. And to the last likening. I wasn't doing that at all, that is what you make of it.

The questions I was actually refering to were the personal ones, like how long you've been studying, how many of the religions you quoted you've actually studied with (rather than merely about, and potentially using WTS literature), etc., etc..

Well, I cant reclaim I ever said i studied with somebody, but here it goes. I studied Chazanut, Rabbanut, Jahadut and a large part of the Talmud Bavli at school and with the rabbeye of the local synagogue. I read NT mostly by myself, went to 2 churches and talked to the pastor of both a few times. Read parts of the Koran myself as part of an introductory course to the Koran of a youthgroup I was member of, in Istanbul. After that course we were in a 45 minute tv program broadcasted in the NL about that course and similar courses to other religions (debate was about tolerance). I have had many conversations with my reformed history teacher in highschool, plus last 6 months with my professors at Uni. Rest of the christian stuff ill prolly learn when studying theology. I had 2 friends who were mormons and were studying in Zoetermeer, where theres also a temple of them, and I had also lots of boom consults and debates with them about the books they added. Uhm, thats some of the stuff, not including all the things ive read totally on my own, like most of the JW lecture, and the few times ive been to KH. Prolly done more then this, much more, been to Israel, been to musea... etcetera.

As I said earlier, I am just beginning, but here comes my question, which I asked repeatadly and I havent seen an answer to that one yet... is there a better religion out there (besides the self-religion) and why is that one better? Only one who tried to answer that was TD, at least I think he did when he said that because of pikuach nefesh Judaism was better then JW.

TD

Greetings Jaron,

First of all, We cannot know exactly what this loss of innocent life is exactly. We cannot know how many lifes actually have been lossed because of not taking bloodtransfusion, and how many lifes have been saved by this.

I wasn?t referring to group statistics, (However the Witness position is dubious even in that context)

I was referring to the individual situation where you are told by the attendant medical personal that non-blood alternatives have been exhausted and someone for whom you are responsible, (e.g. a minor child) will die without the administration of a blood product.

I still read in the newspapers on a weekly bases things going wrong with bloodtransfusions. Just a week ago I read in a newspaper that 10,000 people (i thought in France) have been sent a letter in the mail to not donate under any circumstances any blood, because they have received bloodtransfusions themselves whi ch contained something that could cause severe complications (too bad i threw that away). Anyway, there are still a lot of those messages, and theres no way of telling what the "loss" or the "gain" is.

The most favorable study done in support of the JW position was conducted in 1993 by Dr. Craig S. Kitchens, a VA physician in Gainesville Florida. [1] Kitchens searched MEDLINE and compiled 1404 surgical cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses which were collated into 16 surgical categories. Although Kitchens questioned the propriety of reflexively administering blood and rightly so, his own figures showed increased mortality associated with refusing blood ranging from amounts too small to measure to 8.33% in cardiovascular surgery. Overall, refusing blood resulted in an increased mortality of between 0.5% and 1.5%

On the flip-side of the coin, Sazama analyzed 355 blood transfusion-associated deaths reported to the United States Food and Drug Administration just three years prior to this. [2] The short-term mortality rate from accepting blood, which corresponds to Kitchens'
estimate of short-term mortality rate from refusing blood, was 1 to 1.2 per 100,000 patients who received blood transfusions.

In other words, accepting blood transfusion increased mortality by 0.001 to 0.0012%, whereas refusing blood transfusion increased mortality by 0.5% to 1.5%.

The risk of blood transfusion was again extensively reviewed in the "Medical Progress" review in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1999.[3][4] In this review, overall mortality from blood transfusion is estimated between 23 and 44 deaths per million units
of blood. These numbers include every known complication from blood transfusion, not just short-term mortality as in Sazama's report.

Even these figures do not directly speak to the magnitude of risk associated with allowing hemoglobin levels to fall much below 6g/dL. (Commonly considered to be the transfusion threshold in low-risk patients) Carson et al. studied 125 surgical patients who were Jehovah's Witnesses and thus refused blood transfusion. It was found that 61.5% of patients whose preoperative hemoglobin fell below 6 g/dL died following the surgery. [5] Patients who refuse a blood transfusion deemed absolutely medically necessary by a physician therefore create a very substantial risk of dying from severe anemia.

(1) Kitchens CS. Are transfusions overrated? Surgical outcome of
Jehovah's Witnesses. American Journal Of Medicine 1993;94:117-119
(2) Sazama K: Reports of 355 transfusion-associated deaths: 1976
through 1985. Transfusion 1990;30:583-90
(3) Goodnough LT, Brecher ME, Kanter MH, et al.: Transfusion medicine.
First of two parts--blood transfusion. New England Journal Of
Medicine 1999;340:438-47
(4) Goodnough LT, Brecher ME, Kanter MH, et al.: Transfusion medicine.
Second of two parts--blood conservation. New England Journal Of
Medicine 1999;340:525-33
(5) Lancet 1988 Apr 2;1(8588):727-9 Severity of anaemia and operative
mortality and morbidity. Carson JL, Poses RM, Spence RK, Bonavita G.
Department of Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New
Jersey/Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick.

But I think that you are working under a very important premise, which is that the loss of innocent life is more important to God then anything else, or at least more important then not having a bloodtransfusion.

That?s not really the premise per se.

The core premise is something most true believers would not argue with. --Direct commands from God are only contravened by other direct commands for God.

If you?ve had any substantial contact with Jehovah?s Witnesses, (And it seems that you have) you?re very familiar with the example of Uzzah and the ark of the covenent. (2 Sam 6:7) Remember how Uzzah attempted to steady the ark when it was in danger of falling?

It did not matter whether Uzzah's intentions were good or not. He broke a direct command from God and God struck him dead for it.

You don?t break a direct command from God based on your own flawed human supposition of what you think he might want. If God wants you to break one of his commands, he'll tell you with another command.

But, if you read your bible, it says several times that blood is holy. That's also why the command of not eating blood is there in the first place! Blood is holy and it should only be used for holy usage.

O.K. For the sake of discussion, Blood is holy. Try to flesh this argument out a bit. How does it follow from this that God disapproves of transfusion?

While it could perhaps be argued that blood has been profaned or desecrated when it is either consumed as food or employed as an ink, dye, stain, paint, gelling agent, etc., on what basis should this be considered applicable to the basic set of functions for which God originally designed blood in the first place? (Circulating in your arteries and veins.)

Given that both life and blood are sacred, the organic function for which God designed blood cannot casually be relegated to the realm of the mundane as it is not only the tie which binds the two together, it is arguably the very reason why God chose blood as the symbol for life in the first place.

With that in mind, how would transfusion profane or desecrate blood? (Specifically) At what point in the procedure would this occur? (Specifically)

Now, the standpoint of the JW is what you may call "fanatic" on this one, compared to other beliefs. Sure, I totally agree with you there. But it is grounded on the bible. The question is wether or not, if it were specified, God would have forbidden bloodtransfusions.

Come now, God could easily have said, ?Do not use blood.? This would have covered all ancient use of blood known at the time as well as modern uses by implication.

But that's not what he did. All biblical prohibitions against blood occur within a very clear dietary context.

You say he wouldnt in the case of a child dying and when he/she is in need of the blood. You say yes, because you have a strong 'moral justification'. But what about the rest of the evil we see on this world? Couldn't God stop this too? And so we return to the question why God allows evil in the first place, which is something I am not going to debate in this thread right now.

I'm not sure what you're driving at here. Evil in the world is certainly not something for believers to imitate.

Truth is, at the end its all about what you believe, and what is more important to you yourself. If you say: "If you are a believer, it is not up to you to pick and choose which of God's commands you will follow." And one thing that has been repeatedly shown in the bible is that blood is holy, and is only used to glorify God, then you should ask yourself seriously if, when you take bloodtransfusion, you are not striving against God's will. I can see your point, of course I do, but that is not enough of an argument against bloodtransfusion.

A question I think you should ask yourself is this:

Is the real issue about blood as a substance or about what blood represented in the specific context of slaughtering an animal for food?

For example, Take a look at a bone marrow biopsy.

Here you see a little bit of everything. You see both juvenile and mature red blood cels, white blood cells and various precursor cells.

Remember that the Israelites were allowed to eat bone marrow and in so doing they ate blood. Therefore the Israelites were allowed to eat blood in some contexts and not others.

How then, can the issue be about blood as a substance? Isn't the issue more accurately about what the blood of a slaughtered animal represented?

I must come to the conclusion that we cannot prove these phrases, just like we can't prove that the bible asks us to obey the trafficlaws. But we can argument TO them. In the end this discussion is all about what you find more important, and I myself think that in keeping to Gods word, even if it causes death, and EVEN if it causes death to loved ones (which is usually far worse then the former), then your believe in God is really strong and you would follow in the footsteps of people like Abraham, Job, Daniel and many more. No JW would want these things to happen of course, but they will try to keep to the Truth that their Creator gave them, and will see their loved ones again in an eternal paradise.

Yes, Abraham is considered an outstanding example of faith because he attempted to sacrifice his own son at God's command.

On the other hand, the ancient Phoenicians are considered an outstanding example of the lowest depths of depravity to which human beings are capable of sinking for sacrificing their children.

What was the difference between the two? Abraham acted in obedience to a direct command. The Phoenicians did not.

I like Jehovah's Witnesses, but they truly, honestly don't seem to understand this difference. They give as much weight to their human interpretations as they do to what God actually said.

Valis

The Unitarians by far...the services I have ever attended have been very nice. They let anyone come to worship with their own bible, no canned responses from the audience, no party line litterature to study before hand, etc..They don't even mind if the athiests share in their services.

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