Posts by TD

25

Eating of blood prohibition specifically not forbidden for non-Jews

by peacefulpete in

deut 14:21 you shall not eat anything that has died a natural death; give it to the stranger in your community to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner.

for you are a people consecrated to yhwh.... it seems quite self evident the ritual of blood letting prior to eating meat was understood by the deuteronomist as binding only on jews..

TD

How modern is modern?

The idea is at least as old as the Talmud.

25

Eating of blood prohibition specifically not forbidden for non-Jews

by peacefulpete in

deut 14:21 you shall not eat anything that has died a natural death; give it to the stranger in your community to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner.

for you are a people consecrated to yhwh.... it seems quite self evident the ritual of blood letting prior to eating meat was understood by the deuteronomist as binding only on jews..

The position of Jehovah's Witnesses, stated in multiple publications is that, "People of all nations were bound by the requirement at Genesis 9:3, 4, but those under the Law were held by God to a higher standard..."

The position of Jehovah's Witnesses, stated in even more publications is that the Apostolic Decree was, "...based on the Bible record concerning events that predated the Law. So there was not an imposing on Gentile Christians of a responsibility to conform to the Mosaic Law or some portion of it but, rather, there was a confirming of standards recognized prior to Moses."

The abstention of blood in the Decree was therefore not a reiteration of the strict requirements of the Law. It was (According to the JW parent organization) a reiteration of the simpler Noahide requirement.

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Even strictly within the context of the Law, there is no prohibition on the storage of blood. The ceremonial uses of blood mandated in the Law actually required the storage of blood and there were pitchers and bowls among the temple accoutrements for that purpose which are described in Deuteronomy.

The idea that blood cannot be "used" comes from the Oral Law and Chumash sources, which Jehovah's Witnesses do not accept. -More specifically, you could not profit from the use of blood in any way, which is not quite the same thing, but is pretty close when it comes to using animal blood as an ink, dye, stain, paint, gelling agent, etc.

Throughout all of this, Jehovah's Witnesses steadfastly ignore the fact that blood had a "use" long before the fall of Man and the need for a Redeemer ever arose. All of us "use" blood in this sense, which is what transfusion is all about. It is a use of blood in accordance with its design purpose and not comparable to anything you can find in the Bible.

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You've reiterated a flawed argument that the Jehovah's Witnesses abandoned in the late 1960's, which is that, ..."the recipient of a BT "consumes" blood by using it inside his body and in time absorbing it."

Hemoglobin, through a series of enzyme reactions is converted into unconjugated bilirubin which gives excreta (i.e. bile and stool) their characteristic colors and is the polar opposite of absorption.

The one single component of blood that actually can provide a nutritional benefit when transfused is serum albumin. We have much better and more cost-effective solutions today, but it was used in post-war Japan for example to bring people back from the brink of starvation when they were too weak to eat. Serum albumin, even when administered as a transfusion to burn patients has been allowed under JW policy for decades now, so that secondary benefit is of no consequence and the JW parent organization does not make that argument today.

25

Eating of blood prohibition specifically not forbidden for non-Jews

by peacefulpete in

deut 14:21 you shall not eat anything that has died a natural death; give it to the stranger in your community to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner.

for you are a people consecrated to yhwh.... it seems quite self evident the ritual of blood letting prior to eating meat was understood by the deuteronomist as binding only on jews..

TD

Therefore, what about taking a pint of blood from an animal or human without killing anybody and consuming the blood putting it into a person’s vein for medical reasons, is such blood sacred to God or is it the same as that of a dead animal?

The symbolism attached to blood was transferred by Jesus' own command to the sacraments of Communion (i.e. Emblems of Memorial) Sacrifices no longer have any sin atoning value whatsoever and it therefore cannot reasonably be argued that the blood of such is sacred. --Not if you're Christian and literate.

Even were that not the case, the transfusion of blood is physically, morally, ethically and ontologically distinguishable from the consumption of blood and it is the fallacy of equivocation to attempt to lump them into the same category.

Jehovah's Witnesses themselves recognize this distinction in a number of transfusion scenarios today and the scope of the prohibition has dwindled over years down to just the intact, cellular components of blood.

Unfortunately, this has introduced a number of contradictions that are not defensible from a medical or scientific standpoint, which makes arguing in favor of the prohibition a thorny proposition.

16

JW's were born and built through primitive religions dynamics

by Victor in

russel and his followers were a byproduct of the religious orthodoxy revolt that originated in europe.

this revolution of ideas crossed over to america seeding all the fringe groups who russel then became a part of.

this resistance to the establishment is similar to what we have seen recently with the q annon phenomena.

TD

Mass movements of all types definitely share some similarities.

The most common is the belief of the author/founder that they have discovered a connection that everybody else has somehow missed.

37

Are you open to having a count as to how many ex-JW`s on this site are vaccinated x2 jabs. ?

by smiddy3 in

i`ll go first ,i have my vaccinated 2 jabs for the elderly.. if i`m not around in the next 3 months you will know why ..

TD

It's different in the USA than it was in Germany during the Nazi era.

she gives her account of Hitler's takeover of Austria.

???

Hitler became Chancellor of Germany through democratic process, which is why people today are wary of politicians who attain cult followings.

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More in the spirit of this thread, I think people are overreacting.

If you don't remember sound cars playing a recording of an iron lung at 110 db; if you don't remember being marched into the school cafeteria to receive the two-part measles vaccine; if you don't remember the nasty, weeping pock on your shoulder from the small pox vaccine, then the situation vis-a-vis Covid might seem new and strange.

We've been through much worse .

37

Are you open to having a count as to how many ex-JW`s on this site are vaccinated x2 jabs. ?

by smiddy3 in

i`ll go first ,i have my vaccinated 2 jabs for the elderly.. if i`m not around in the next 3 months you will know why ..

TD

I've recently had the booster which is a third if you count them that way.

On a different note, Hitler hat Deutschland nicht gewaltsam übernommen und während der NS-Zeit gab es viele Waffen auf den Straßen

83

I understand your separating yourselves from the Org...BUT~

by Revealed in

...why have you left the god and his son?.

TD

The fact that there was an original man & woman is confirmed by genetics,

The articles I've seen quoted to that effect have been misrepresented via the conflation of two related, but different ideas. The idea of a possible common ancestor is very different than the idea of an original ancestor and I've never seen a scientific claim for the latter. The time scales involved also tend to become seriously distorted.

83

I understand your separating yourselves from the Org...BUT~

by Revealed in

...why have you left the god and his son?.

TD

don't personally believe acceptance of the flood story is necessary for one to be Christian (Because the moral lesson of a story is no less real when it is clearly allegorical, symbolic or mythological..)

--No more so than the idea that the antediluvian world was entirely vegetarian

When people say these stories, as they are told in the Pentateuch, are scientifically impossible, it's not just coffee talk.

For example, humans have driven enough species to the brink of extinction that we know what it takes to bring them back via captive breeding programs. With higher mammals it takes in the neighborhood of 30 individuals, provided there is enough genetic diversity to start with. Even then, records have to be kept so that the pairings can be carefully selected, deformities have to be weeded out, and the offspring must be immunized because within a few generations they will be so closely related that a disease that kills one could kill them all.

This is not speculative. There are entire books on the subject based on direct experience.

With humans, this problem is multiplied 10 fold; not only because it is not in our nature to accept that level of control, but because we are less tolerant to inbreeding than any other species. That's why humans all over earth developed such elaborate marriage customs. That's why Native American tribes kidnapped and/or traded for wives from other tribes. That's why Aboriginal peoples divided their tribes into moieties and marriages had to take place across moiety lines. Without these or equivalent customs, indigenous populations simply did not last and again, there are entire books on the subject.

The idea of an animal population going down to a single breeding pair is ridiculous. The idea of the human population going down to three viable couples is even more ridiculous, especially when the three males were all brothers.

68

Help with 1975 please

by jhine in

i answered a question on quora about jw flip flops .

i mentioned, amongst other things , the 1975 debacle.

how witnesses were told that armageddon was coming in the fall of that year.

TD

Fisherman

Later it was believed that Eve must have been created some years later after Adam and everyone waited for Eve to be created.

Yes.

After 1975 came and went, the time interval between Adam's creation and Eve's creation began to stretch like a rubber band.

But definitive statements to the contrary had already been put into print in multiple publications. The JW Bible Encyclopedia Aid To Bible Understanding in the article "Eve" had even gone so far as to state that she had given birth to Seth at the age of 130, which was the exact same age that JW's' believed Adam to be at the time. (They actually still do teach that Adam was 130 when Seth was born.) That publication was not replaced in any official capacity until the late '80s.

So JW's today who say that that it was all just speculation; that people had gone beyond what had actually been printed; had read too much into the publications, yada, yada yada, either were not alive at the time or have developed selective amnesia.

68

Help with 1975 please

by jhine in

i answered a question on quora about jw flip flops .

i mentioned, amongst other things , the 1975 debacle.

how witnesses were told that armageddon was coming in the fall of that year.

TD

It was never said that armageddon would happen in the fall of 1975.

You're right. They were never that explicit.

The proximity of the end to the fall of '75 was implicit in the reasoning though:

First: That in order for Jesus to be "Lord of the Sabbath," the millennial reign would need to correspond with the final thousand years of God's sabbath. (cf. Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God p. 30)

Section: That Eve was created and God's sabbath began less than a year after Adam's creation. JW's seem to be amnesiac on this point, but the claim was put into print on three separate occasions.