Blood and RANK dishonesty!

by Marvin Shilmer 37 Replies latest jw friends

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  Marvin Shilmer

  The thread started by Maximus named GB Admits it Has No Answers, Blood ( http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=9056&site=3 ) is chock full of good information and is what this thread stems from. If you have not already read Maximus’ thread, you should. I felt like adding my two cents about one aspect of that discussion. This thread is the result.

  *** w90 6/1 31 Questions From Readers ***

  It is significant that the blood system of a pregnant woman is separate from that of the fetus in her womb; their blood types are often different. The mother does not pass her blood into the fetus. Formed elements (cells) from the mother’s blood do not cross the placental barrier into the fetus’ blood, nor does the plasma as such. In fact, if by some injury the mother’s and the fetus’ blood mingle, health problems can later develop (Rh or ABO incompatibility).

  The WTS comment seems to assign significance to whether parts of blood are cellular or not, as if that makes a difference, when form (e.g., cellular or not) is of no significance at all in relation to what passes between mother and child. SIZE is the sole factor determining what moves from mother to child (or vice versa) by way of the placenta. Whether a particle is cellular or not is has nothing to do with it. HIV and AIDS are formed elements, and they will pass from mother to child.

  What about unnatural exchanges of blood parts due to injury? Auspice of injury is brought up apparently to explain why sometimes parts of blood like red cells do exchange between a mother and her unborn, indicating this is less than a god approved use of blood parts. How about hemoglobin? Does anyone care to guess the only way that significant amounts of hemoglobin could get from a mother to her unborn child? You got it! Injury! Probably severe injury! But guess what, no matter the amount, the WTS allows hemoglobin without possible repercussion of shunning from JWs! So much for any unnatural exchange theory!

  Speaking of significant details, the absence of any WTS discussion of the natural person-to-person exchange of blood parts (even whole blood!) between monochorionic twins and triplets is conspicuous, and telling. As has been noted on this forum, in its deductions the WTS has conveniently presented its own version of one example of natural person-to-person exchange of blood parts (i.e., mother to child via placenta) while ignoring a discussion of the WHOLE topic of natural person-to-person exchanges of blood parts. This sort of selective examination and reasoning is just plain dishonest! I know some WTS apologetics have argued that dishonesty is a state of mind and therefore we cannot definitively prove dishonesty on the WTS’ part, but this discussion puts that argument to shame. Other than dishonesty there is just no viable reason the WTS would remain CONSPICUOUSLY silent on a discussion of the WHOLE topic of natural person-to-person exchange of blood parts. There are plenty of WTS physicians! Would anyone seriously try to argue that not a single ONE of these physicians has told the WTS of the natural blood sharing between monochorionic twins and triplets?

  The depth of headburying by the WTS on the subject of blood is simply beyond belief! Then there is the WTS ignoring well-reasoned pleas from its own “practicing members!” (Ref: jw-media.org) Reliable informers tell me a mountain load of letters and calls have been received from “practicing members” with pleas for the to WTS address flaws in current policy, to no avail. They are ignored or else questions and requests are dodged. What rank hypocrisy and dishonesty it is to represent a policy as scriptural and then turn around and REFUSE to correct faults in plain view of any reasonable person, to say nothing of ignoring those who are THEIR OWN!
• 

  voltaire

  Marvin,

  Very scholarly post. There is an alternative explanation to the dishonesty hypothesis. Complete and total ignorance.(I know that's redundant, but I like the sound of it!) It strikes me that the evolution/creation debate is similar. They have either knowingly ommitted facts that are central to the issue or they really aren't capable of (or interested in) understanding them.
  Good work.
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  Maximus

  Clearly this is a pattern with the Society. They first arrive at policy, then they selectively put facts and quotations together, whether inconsistent or not. The flock must accept such dogma on pain of enforced shunning.

  This same approach tinges all their publications, and explains distorted quotations lifted out of context.

  "Rank." Conspicuously offensive. Good word choice.

  Maximus
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  Marvin Shilmer

  Hi, voltaire!

  I considered ignorance in defense of dishonesty, but it is just not a viable alternative. There are well-qualified physicians on staff for the WTS. No one can make me believe they are unaware of facts like the natural person-to-person exchange of whole blood between monochorionic twins and triplets. Besides that I know for a fact the WTS has had this detail and others like it pointed out. What do they do? Bury their collect head in sand at the expense of millions of Jehovah’s Witnesses looking for answers! This is an indisputable and RANK act of dishonesty!

  Greetings, Maximus.

  You are correct in assessing how the WTS has tried to add credence to its policy, and it stinks. The idea of enforcing this brand of teaching is gasoline on an already burning fire of man injuring man.
• 

  voltaire

  Marvin,

  You're probably correct. I think I use the above line of reasoning since, regardless of the choice, there's no really no excuse. With the evolution issue, it seems plausible that whoever wrote the Creation book might have simply pasted together the quotes. They are freely available in any creationist rag. Also, I think the science involved in the creation/evolution debate is often not as easy to understand. No one is dying as a result of the creation policy, either. So this is less reason to suppose that this issue comes up for discussion.

  I think it's simply in my nature to always assume the best of others. I agree that it's highly unlikely that the higher-ups aren't aware of these issues. Most likely scenario is as Maximus states. They set policy first, look for support later and ignore anything that doesn't fit. Looks like you have them in a very tight box.
• 

  battman

  Yikes, for some reason I am not able to open up
  the URL posted above. I have tried several times
  from the original posting and again here with no
  result. This same thing has happen lately with
  several other interesting threads. Help anyone?

  battman
  of the running behind again class
• 

  Maximus

  Inclined to be similarly disposed, Voltaire, I appreciate your comments. However, I'm not guessing or making an assertion here.

  I'm stating a fact about which I am VERY knowledgeable.

  :: Looks like you have them in a very tight box.

  What's the line? Truer words were never spoken.

  Max
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  Francois

  Voltaire, why bother giving the JWs the benefit of the doubt? When have they ever done so?

  Francois

  Where it is a duty to worship the Sun you can be sure that a study of the laws of heat is a crime.
• 

  AlanF

  It may be that in an absolute sense dishonesty is a state of mind, but in a practical sense it's often easy to tell when someone is deliberately dishonest.

  Take the Creation book. It contains a claim that the noted evolutionist Richard Lewontin, writing in a 1978 Scientific American article, supports the notion that the 'design of life' argues in favor of a Creator. Anyone with the ability to write about such topics obviously has enough intelligence to realize that that claim is at best extremely suspicious. It's pretty obvious that whoever wrote that section of the Creation book had to have looked up the SA article and read what Lewontin actually said. The full reference to the SA article is given, which proves this further. Since the writer read the material and is not so stupid as to have misunderstood it, the only explanation left for the misrepresentation is that it was deliberate. And since this pattern of misrepresention is repeated in the book so often as to actually characterize the writer's practice, and since this pattern is found all throughout Watchtower literature since its very beginning, it is fair to say that Watchtower writers are trained to be dishonest when it suits their purposes.

  AlanF
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  Maximus

  Permit me to add to what AlanF presents, lifted from a previous post of mine.

  Let me offer another example of the use of selective quotations. For many, many years the Society has quoted famed British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle out of context. They have portrayed him as against evolution and as a creationist. I’ll be charitable and say that writer after writer trotted out the same stuff for years, without checking. You can find the citations for yourself, so I’ll just supply Hoyle’s.

  Take a look at the dust jacket of his book "The Intelligent Universe" which speaks for itself: "The **Darwinian** theory of evolution is shown to be plainly wrong. Life has evolved [!!!] because biological components of cosmic origin have been progressively assembled here on Earth. These components have arrived from outside, borne in from the cosmos on comets" ... "The key to understanding evolution is the virus. The viruses responsible for evolution and the viruses responsible for diseases are very similar." (Published first in 1983 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.)

  Note that it is Darwinism and not evolution that Sir Fred takes issue with. He believes that our planet is an "assembly station" that was "seeded" from outer space and that life did indeed evolve, just not from inanimate matter. Please also note that his thesis is not buried somewhere in his books; they are the heart and soul of his clearly written argument.

  It is difficult to believe that the Society’s writers have never read an entire publication by Sir Fred or more than a line or two. If they have not, their misrepresentations are indefensible. If they have read his books, they are obviously suppressing or misrepresenting what the distinguished astronomer really espouses, because it is quite impossible to read his books without understanding what he clearly articulates.

  In using this and similar books in the past, perhaps the Society’s writer looked only at the FRONT of the book’s dust jacket, whose subtitle is "A New View of Creation and Evolution," and did not look at the BACK, on which there are a picture of the astronomer and in large print the words, "We have DESCENDED FROM LIFE SEEDED FROM THE DEPTHS OF SPACE." (Caps mine.)

  On page 41 of the Creator book under the heading "A Deliberate Intellectual Act" in another, longer quotation we read (finally after all these years) the all-but-buried clause referring to Hoyle, "even espousing that life on earth arrived from outer space," while the paragraph ends by quoting him that "it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act." (You are encouraged to read the entire page for yourself.)

  Sounds great, he believes in God and creation, right? Once again the sentences are taken out of context, so that the reader will infer what the author does not imply. The reader readily concludes that a toweringly important scientist believes what JWs believe.

  Read for yourself Hoyle’s discussions about cosmic intelligences superior to ours. And what does he actually believe about creation?

  In his own words: "It makes little difference whether the Universe was created in 4004 BC as Archbishop Ussher asserted, or 10,000,000 years ago, if indeed there ever was a creation, which as we have seen there are plenty of reasons to doubt." [!]

  Hoyle winds up his argument by noting: "Because the correct logical procedure is to build upwards from precisely formed subroutines, we on the Earth had to evolve [!] from a seemingly elementary starting point. Yet so powerful was the onward surge, so urgent the climb up the great mountain, that on Earth a creature at last arose with an inkling in its mind of what it really was, a whisper of its identity: We are the intelligence that preceded us in its new material representation—or rather, we are the re-emergence of that intelligence, the latest embodiment of its struggle for survival." (Pp. 238, 239.)

  You be the judge: Does Sir Fred Hoyle believe what the Society would have you think? Is the basic belief of Sir Fred Hoyle supportive of the Society’s position? Absolutely not. That hasn’t stopped them from misquoting him for years.

  A final thought: When teaching at Gilead School, Bert Schroeder (now an aged and frail member of the GB) used to cite the rule "falsus in uno, falsus in toto" as a standard to determine trustworthiness—"untrue in one, untrue in all."

  Time to apply this yardstick.

  What do you think? Is this honest misunderstanding?

  Maximus